Insurers Are Not on Your Side
Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars that insurers spend in marketing to convince prospective policyholders otherwise, insurance companies are not on “your side.” This can surprise many injured policyholders who find that their insurer is rather distant, if not outright hostile, in the wake of an accident — the insurer may challenge their narrative of the accident and question whether the policyholder has a legitimate claim at all. If the policyholder was relying on recovery through their insurance plan, this can put them in a vulnerable financial position.Insurer profitability is fundamentally linked to the policyholder’s failure to obtain value on the underlying insurance plan. Simply put, insurers improve their profit margins when policyholder claims are denied, or when the claims are undervalued to a significant degree. If a policyholder has a legitimate claim, then a strategy that convinces the policyholder to resign themselves to a denial (or to a lower settlement amount) is also effective for profit maximization.
Insurers Use Post-Accident Communications to Glean Damaging Facts from the Policyholder
In the post-accident context, insurers will aggressively seek to undermine, devalue, and otherwise interfere with your ability to secure benefits under the insurance plan. To do so, they may reach out to you and attempt to establish regular communications. In these conversations, they will ask about a number of issues, from your personal narrative of the accident to how you felt about the accident, and even how soon you sought out medical attention, and what sort of injuries you suffered.Though these may seem like innocuous, relevant questions, it’s important to understand that you are not necessarily equipped to fully identify the severity of your injuries, or to evaluate the narrative of the accident — the physical and emotional trauma of the accident, along with various other factors, can impact your ability to properly judge the events surrounding the accident (and your injury). The insurer knows this and utilizes their experience and informational advantage to lull you into a false sense of security during the conversation so that you will reveal something they can use as the basis for denying your subsequent claims.
For example, if you say that you were worried because you were driving “kind of fast,” then the insurer may use that statement to justify a denial on the basis that their coverage does not extend to policyholders whose injuries were partially caused by their own negligence (here, speeding).
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Injured in an accident? If you’re covered by insurance, then you may be planning on submitting a claim, but be careful — without the assistance of a qualified personal injury attorney, you might reveal information that could undermine your claims and be used to justify a denial.
It’s critical that you consult an attorney about your case.
Experienced attorneys provide guidance throughout the claims process, and communicate (on your behalf) with insurers, saving you the hassle and preventing any sensitive or otherwise damaging information from being disclosed.