Insurance/Legal Matters in Restoration

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In part one of this article we explored the four stages of turnaround involved in saving a failing business, including the objectives and actions necessary in each stage. These are the mechanics involved in bringing a business back to solvency and setting it up for sustained profitability in the future. Most of the information is easy to identify with; even common sense, if you will.

If you have been in the restoration business for more than five years, you have likely noticed it is getting harder to collect from your customers who are dependent upon insurance proceeds and two-party checks to pay for your services. 

When a property owner is surprised by the lack of insurance coverage for a water loss, the credit worthiness of the customer may come into question.

Working with third party administrators is pretty much a normal way of life for restoration contractors in the U.S. Only a select few companies have chosen the path of completely finding work on their own, and bypassing TPA work. 

Catastrophes, while terrible for people in the affected area, produce a lot of restoration and remediation work in a concentrated area, making them an incredible business opportunity for restoration contractors.

In disaster restoration, most negotiations occur between the contractor’s estimator or project manager and the insurance adjuster. The negotiation tends to be adversarial in nature, and generally ends with one of the parties feeling like they were cheated or taken advantage of.

A few years ago, a restoration client of mine asked me what he could do to speed up payment from bank escrow accounts for the insurance claim work he had done.