Page 39 - Insurance Times April 2021

impose the responsibility of maintaining confidentiality and The sheer bad practice here is that the surveyor should
neutrality without jeopardising the liability of the insurer and know the approximate amount of loss by a minute
claim of the insured. physical inspection of the damaged property. He should
enquire/know that prevailing local prices of the items
The Chapter VI (1) titled Code of Conduct of the same of similar quality damage. By all means, he is duty
Regulation stipulates ethical behaviour with integrity on the bound to do the above job by physical inspection,
part of the surveyor. Integrity hereby implies not merely measurements and local price enquiry.
honesty but fair dealings and truthfulness. Unfortunately, in
most of the cases, these are not practised. 2. Sanctioned plan of the house for the area
and age of the building:
This piece will show the hollowness of such demand for This document is useful if the same is readily available.
documents from the surveyor document by document. The However, for reasonably old residential property it may
list (not exhaustive) is as under:
be the case that the old widow is not aware where the
1. Estimate of loss:
sanction plan was kept by her late husband. It is
The very first favourite document of a surveyor for any absolutely surprising that the surveyor would go on
property loss is the document called the "estimate of insisting for the same document over and over again
loss". This actually is a preliminary figure which is much to the annoyance of the insured. We are of the
supposed to be submitted by the insured and backed firm belief that it is the duty of the surveyor to take
by one or multiple documents from the third party the measurement of the whole property including the
vendors involved in repair and reinstatement of the loss. affected portions. It is his duty to convince himself about
Such documents are supposed to capture the material the year of construction and the plan, (if at all
cost, labour cost, supervision cost, debris removal cost, important) by visiting the municipal authorities.
architect's fees etc.
3. Fire Brigade report:
Now, for a small fire loss in a residential building, the
This is an important document for processing a fire
challenges faced by the home owner to provide such a claim. The details stated in this report enable the claims
document are as under. department officials of the insurer to cross check the
In small townships, the small contractors are date and time of the fire. The time taken by the fire
neither equipped nor accustomed to provide fighters to extinguish the fire gives a corroborative
itemized repair invoices, that too with GST details.
evidence about the intensity of the fire and the possible
The large contractors are generally not interested extent of damage. The cause of fire stated therein
in undertaking small construction/repair jobs. allows the claims handler to cross check the same with

The cost of a large contractor is far too high even the proximate cause stated in the claim form as well
if he is made agreeable to undertake the repair job. as what has been identified as the cause by the
In such a case, the surveyor insists for a smaller surveyor. For fires in large industrial complexes, large
contractor and the home/shop owner is pushed building complexes, markets with several types of shops
back to the first challenge as stated above. selling and storing several types of merchandizes, such
report gives a good insight into the cause of fire,
breaches of safety norms (if any), storage of declared
or undeclared hazardous items, inadequacy of the fire-
fighting system etc. However, for a simple residential
fire, insisting for a fire brigade report is generally devoid
of much justification. The cause of fire can be very well
be established by mere visual inspection of the place of
loss by the surveyor. Most importantly, getting the fire
brigade report is not easy and is time consuming.
Therefore, except in some rare case where the moral
hazard of the insured is doubtful, fire brigade report
must not be insisted upon by the surveyor as is being
routinely asked.

The Insurance Times, April 2021 39