Insurance Property Repairs
If you have suffered fire damage, water damage or flood damage to your property, one of your first actions will be to start the insurance claim repairs process. Your insurance company will open a home repairs case in their files and they will appoint an insurance claims loss adjuster to your case. This may be an internal loss adjuster or an external specialist. They will also either appoint building reinstatement companies for you or they will ask the property owner to obtain several quotations to submit for insurance claim repairs.
Property owners who are looking for three or more building reinstatement companies to quote will often be unlikely to have had previous experience in restoration projects. They may well not recognise that building restoration projects require special skills that are quite different from those of general building contractors. The ability for all the trades to ‘blend’ in the restoration rebuild is very skilled and also vitally important so that the final job looks prefect, without looking patched in any way.
Property owners may be sometimes tempted to overstate the extent of damage or be coerced by an unscrupulous builder to inflate the insurance quote to their perceived advantage. Professional building restoration companies will refuse to consider this for some very good reasons. As David Hunt, MD of Paradigm Reinstatements, one of the leading insurance reinstatement companies in Central Scotland explains: “In our business we are extremely careful to ensure that three key people are kept happy at all times: 1) The property owner, 2) the insurance company and 3) the loss adjuster. If everyone involved in the process has the motivation to carry out a full restoration repair to a high standard, no more and no less, then everyone is kept happy. If the insurance company gets any evidence that any part of the insurance restoration claim is fraudulent, they will then refuse to pay for the building restoration and will cancel the policy, leaving the property owner with the entire restoration costs to bear. In addition a criminal investigation may follow. We work with loss adjusters all the time and they really know their profession. It is the core of their job to look out for insurance overstatement to mitigate loss to the insurance company. We always advise property owners to do the right thing at all times so they end up with a high standard of building restoration quickly and with minimum hassle. Keeping these three key people happy is how we have built our reputation here at Paradigm Reinstatements”
Whilst repairs are always quoted as ‘like for like’, sometimes the property owner will want a ‘betterment’ element during the building restoration project. That is usually not a problem for a specialist building restoration company as they are adept at ensuring that the property owner pays for any ‘betterment’ element and bills the property owner separately for that. For example, a flooded bathroom may be ripped out and whilst the bathroom suite could be reused, the owner decides on a new suite. This can usually be accommodated as long as the property owner pays the difference and that all parties are informed and the process is transparent and agreed by the property owner, the loss adjuster and the restoration company. The key here is that any betterment costs are agreed and made transparent to all parties in an open and collaborative way.
Why Paradigm Are The Smart Choice
Paradigm Reinstatements is based in central Scotland and is one of the UK’s leading insurance reinstatement companies. They have extensive experience in all types of building restoration projects in Scotland working with many leading insurance companies and their appointed loss adjusters. As a result Paradigm are one of the leading building reinstatement companies appointed by several of the UK’s leading insurance companies...
