Category Archives: Insurance

As the principal of Royal Adjusting Services, which handles plenty of property claims in Fort Worth, Jason Heenan can aver that the protocol for handling foreclosures is quite complex. Nonetheless, Fort Worth property claims involving foreclosures have ballooned greatly in the faltering local housing market, so difficult or not, this kind of work has come to define a bulk of Heenan’s daily tasks. What’s at issue here is not that the houses are in foreclosure. Heenan becomes involved in the entire foreclosure fiasco as a claims adjuster. When he’s working with property claims in Fort Worth that regard foreclosed homes, it’s not because they are foreclosed on, but because they have suffered damage from some kind of natural disaster; they’ve been damaged in a storm, or because of a flood. Remember, when a house goes into foreclosure, the previous owners lose their ownership, but the bank or some creditor now owns the home. The house isn’t abandoned; the bank or creditor owns it. Therefore, they also file insurance claims when the home is hit with damage. What complicates Heenan’s work with property claims in Fort Worth is the simple statistic that foreclosed houses get hit by natural disasters as much as houses whose owners are up to date on their payments. What Heenan prefers about doing property claims on Fort Worth homes that are NOT in foreclosure is that it involves dealing with a person, a real live human being—the homeowner. But when dealing with a house that’s gone into foreclosure, he has to deal with huge corporations of lenders. And they sure know how to make claims submissions unbelievably complex, says Heenan. The intention of the banks or creditors is to take that insurance money and put it into homes nobody lives in. Up front, it just doesn’t seem to add up. But an insurance claim is an insurance claim. Even though dealing with Fort Worth property claims regarding foreclosed homes means working with an impersonal corporation, Heenan still has to follow the same old protocol. The financial market and the nature of the property owner don’t affect how a claim is handled or adjusted. It’s none of Heenan’s business who owns the house—person or corporation. He only needs to know who insures the property and how they want their claims handled. The Texas Department of Insurance is going to want insurance claims handled regardless of who owns the properties. Heenan cites the Texas Department of Insurance’s bill of rights posted on its website, which states that whether a corporation or person owns the property, the adjuster’s obligation is to make sure the insurance claim is handled as if the adjuster was working on a family member’s claim.

You’re just out of college and you start to realize how many different kinds of career paths are truly possible. Whereas you used to think you wanted to be a high school teacher and that was that, now you’re starting to talk to family members about what they do and how they got into their careers. One of these uncles happens to be an insurance claims adjuster. From what he says, you’re getting pretty interested in this career. But what is it like, and how is it going to be starting out as an adjuster you might wonder? Jason Heenan’s the right man to ask. He runs Royal Adjusting Services, a Fort Worth claims management company. His is a kind of a la carte claims adjusting service that works with insurance companies when they need adjusters who have stepped out. Heenan’s been in the business for some time, and says that the first thing a young adjuster ought to know is that, licensing is an extremely important place to do adjusting work, and it’s the easiest place to start and get a handle of the business as a whole. Next, it’s best to pursue an understanding of policy interpretation. It’s important for every adjuster to have a solid grasp of policy interpretation because claims adjusting is built on top of understanding an insurance policy, after all. Next, every adjuster working for the Fort Worth claims management company needs to be familiar with the Texas Department of Insurance. To help adjuster greenhorns out, says Heenan, there are multiple schools and training resources available. In fact, eager beginners can get started with a career as claims adjusters without yet having any hard experience in the trade. Several insurance companies will hire people with no experience and train them with specialized seminars, says Heenan. There are some qualities that make for a good adjuster doing Fort Worth claims management, too. Heenan describes a good adjuster as being highly financially adept and business minded, knowing debits and credits inside and out. Good adjusters also listen very well to clients and policy holders. Sometimes, says Heenan, policy holders are having trouble explaining what about an insurance claim is most important to them. A skilled Fort Worth claims management adjuster has the people skills to read the policy holder, to know that it’s not only the burst pipe that’s the issue, but the stained couches and the moldy rug that were heirlooms. “If you’re not a good listener, you won’t be a good adjuster,” Heenan says. That quality—the good listener—is what stands out the most about an excellent claims adjuster.

Even though the relevance of Jason Heenan’s Royal Adjusting Services reaches all forms of economic activity in Texas, to do his Fort Worth claims service work, Heenan is really only interested in 200 or so individuals state-wide. These are the one or two decision-making people at each insurance company Heenan deals with. And yet, despite their concentrated level of decision making power, these few hundred or so individuals are sent into a flurry of activity when the insurance claims actually come pouring in—and in Texas this is not uncommon. When a big storm hits the area and ravages homes, businesses, and properties, the insurance claims flourish to dizzying levels. That’s when even the insurance companies need to outsource their overflowing claims to a Fort Worth claims service. Of course, these insurance companies staff their own claims adjusters. But Heenan’s claims service in Fort Worth is predicated on its ability to fill the gaps when insurance companies either can’t get to a site or can’t handle all the work alone. When that storm hits—proverbial or hurricane—insurance companies can trust that when their best adjusters have to be out of town, Heenan’s stellar adjusting services will be right nearby, on-hand, to handle the excess weight of all those claims. “We’re like an a la carte claims adjusting service,” says Heenan. When an insurance company’s adjuster is on vacation or on medical leave, Heenan can send in a worthy replacement so that the company’s work doesn’t sit collecting dust. Heenan’s company is an adjusting service that steps in when other adjusters step out. One of the biggest complaints Heenan has heard from leaders in the insurance industry is that in-house claims directors have so much freedom that their work and presence is often inconsistent. But Heenan’s Fort Worth claims service uses a predetermined number of steps to handle every claim. This adherence to strict protocol allows Heenan and his associates to ascertain and guarantee consistent results. Whatever the claim is—whether it has to do with hail damage, storm damage, or flood damage—Heenan starts work first with an investigation and preliminary questions. He and his colleagues introduce themselves to the policy holder, and explain the capacity in which they’re operating on behalf of the insurance provider. This way, Heenan is able to set the expectations upfront, and then delve into the claim.