5 Tips for Contractors Filing Hurricane-Related Insurance Claims

Whether a business’s properties have been flooded, lashed by wind or fully leveled by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, finance leaders at affected companies need to work quickly and document damage carefully to make sure their organizations get the insurance proceeds they are owed as soon as possible, experts told CFO Dive.

The storm-related losses — especially in hard-hit North Carolina — have devastated communities across multiple states. NBC News has reported deaths related to Helene have soared above 200 while Milton was responsible for at least 11 deaths, according to The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, estimates of Helene’s total flood and wind-related losses were pegged at between $30.5 billion and $47.5 billion by CoreLogic, a global property data provider. Milton’s insured losses are expected to range between $30 billion and $50 billion, according to Fitch Ratings. 

Indeed, as Milton approached Florida, concern about the impact those losses could have led the sunshine state’s CFO Jimmy Patronis to issue an emergency rule on Wednesday requiring insurance adjusters to “identify and provide detailed explanations for any changes made to damage estimates,” according to a release. The move came about two years after a group of independent claims adjusters accused insurers of “deceptively” altering damage estimates and low-balling policyholders, according to The Insurance Journal. 

Robert Hartwig, director of the Center for Risk and Uncertainty Management and a clinical associate professor at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business, said in an interview Friday that the alleged deceptive practices were not a widespread problem, noting that regulators often take a hard posture against the insurance sector during times of crises. However, he said there are some steps that CFOs and finance executives can take to smooth the way to getting their claims paid. They include: 

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