Negotiating With Insurers

Payne & Fears effectively and efficiently negotiates insurance claims for business clients to maximize claim payouts, often without resorting to insurance litigation. We help businesses and executives negotiate commercial general liability claims, professional liability claims, third-party property, and bodily injury claims, and error and omissions claim. We employ several proven insurance negotiation strategies when approaching an insurance negotiation. Successful negotiations begin when businesses first notify their insurers of their claim. It’s important to provide insurance companies with all relevant information from the outset, and businesses must make it clear to their insurers that they know the terms of their policy and are prepared to enforce them.

Businesses facing complex commercial or professional liability claims must immediately convey to their insurance companies that they are not dealing with an unsophisticated insured. Involving coverage counsel when the business first tenders a claim encourages the insurance company to follow claim-handling laws and to take the claim seriously from the outset.

Insurers often deny claims based either on a purported lack of information or the insurance company’s misreading of the facts supporting the claim. When we handle insurance claims from day one, we make sure the insurance tender clearly lays out all facts applicable to coverage and sets forth the strongest coverage arguments from the outset.

Often, the insurer’s denial of a claim is just the beginning of our negotiation. We have successfully negotiated settlements of many claims that were initially denied by our clients’ insurance companies before they retained Payne & Fears. We perform thorough coverage evaluations and draft detailed requests for reconsideration of insurance claim denials for our clients. If there is any possibility of coverage for a claim, considering the facts of the claim and the applicable law, we present the best coverage argument to the insurance company, creating leverage that often leads to successful resolution of the claim.

Insurance companies are aware of the risks involved with litigation – including the spectre of bad faith and punitive damages. And in many jurisdictions, insurance companies that breach their insurance contracts by wrongfully denying a claim must pay their insureds’ attorney’s fees and costs incurred in the ensuing coverage litigation, in addition to paying the original claim amount. We use these risks as leverage to encourage insurance companies to settle. When faced with the possibility of an unfavorable ruling that exposes the company to damages beyond policy benefits, many insurance companies will choose to settle without litigating.

We efficiently and effectively negotiate insurance claims, regardless of where in the insurance claim process we begin. Whether a business has just been involved in an incident that may warrant an insurance claim, or its insurance claim has already been denied, Payne & Fears can often negotiate a favorable resolution of the claim.