Page 38 - Insurance Times April 2021

THE TRAUMA

CALLED

PROPERTY

INSURANCE

CLAIM

T aking and talking about property insurance is possible angles resulting into trouble, annoyance, frustration

illusive concept and getting a claim is a traumatic
and eventual jeopardization or even rejection of the claim.
He does it by dumping the policy holder with a requirement
experience in India. There are definitely
exceptions but any opinion survey with the Home
of Request) for documents.
Insurance policy holders and Shop Insurance policy holders of what is known as documents or more formally LOR (Letter
would reveal the above. In the era of fully nationalized
General Insurance sector, the villain was mostly the We would argue that for small property losses, the
Insurance company. Now, it is the property surveyor who surveyor's insistence on "so -called" document requirement
gets undue importance in the whole eco-system of survey is mostly baseless and can be done away with. The
of loss, assessment, document verification and subsequent surveyor's job is an independent assessment of the loss for
disposal of the claim. which his expectation of being served with the host of
documents on a platter is totally unjustified. In effect, the
Here we are talking about simple fire, flood or say inundation Indian surveyors are doing 90% document survey job and
losses to the insured residential/small shop property where 10% real assessment job. Unfortunately, it should be 90%
the quantum of loss could range between say Rs. 40,000/- real assessment job based on minute physical inspection,
and Rs. 10,00,000/- or may be more but within say Rs. measurement, examining the degree of damages, condition
20,00,000/-. The surveyor complicates the claim from all of the property, technical analysis, market study of the
prices of damaged items, possibility of re-use of materials,
About the author best possible sale of salvage etc.

Samiran Lahiri Chapter IV of the IRDAI (Insurance Surveyors and Loss
Executive Director and CEO (Principal Assessors Regulation), 2015 clearly stipulates these jobs as
Officer), Preferred Partners Insurance stated above as part of duties and responsibilities of a
Brokers Pvt. Ltd.
surveyor and loss assessors. The Regulations categorically
38 The Insurance Times, April 2021