This should come as no surprise. Especially to those of you who have ever had to deal with your insurance company in submitting a claim.
Insurance companies are putting profits before service and people.
Yet despite record profits, reform to many laws pertaining to insurance claims, insurance rates continue to go up for all hard working Floridians.
A recent report reveals the sad state of affairs for many insurance companies.
The report illustrates how the insurance industry is making money by delaying claims and how it has shifted from a service industry to an industry that is driven purely by profit.
Unlike many other businesses, the insurance industry is bound by law to act in good faith with its customers. Because of their protective role in the lives of ordinary citizens, insurers have long operated as semi-public trusts.
But since the mid-1990s, a new profit-hungry model, combined with weak regulation, has upended that ancient social contract.
Claims have been converted into a money-making process for the insurance companies to the detriment of their policy holders. The change started when insurance companies altered their claims handling procedures. Rather than adjusting claims the traditional way, which gave claims managers wide latitude to serve customers, insurers embraced a computer-driven method that produced purposefully low offers to policy holders.
The low offers has had the effect of allowing insurance companies to either settle claims much cheaper or force unnecessary and costly litigation costs for both the insured and the insurance companies.
The objective was to make claims so expensive and so time-consuming that many policy holders would simply just fold, walk away settle for pennies on the dollar as to the actual value of their claim while many lawyers would start refusing to help policy holders in need.
Delay, deny, defend, has become the new battle cry for the insurance industry.
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Our Miami insurance dispute lawyers handle insurance claims for homeowners. Our attorneys represented insurance companies before 2006, when we opened a firm dedicated to fighting for the rights of consumers. We understand how insurance companies work. And we have the knowledge and experience necessary to represent homeowners in disputes over an insurance claim.