The Claim Game: A Homeowner's Guide to Avoiding an Insurance Catastrophe


Book Description

In these troubled economic times a home is a precious commodity. Protecting that investment has never been more important for homeowners and property owners. When Mother Nature or good old fashion bad luck cause damage to a property, homeowners turn to their insurers to help them restore their property. Insurers, meanwhile, are as equally interested in enhancing their bottom lines as homeowners are in protecting their investment. When these interests collide, the claim game begins and the fight to protect your home and get what is owed you becomes a high stakes game of chance. Without the right guidance, without knowing the Rules of the Game--rules written by and for the insurers--you could find yourself on the losing end. The Claim Game levels the playing field between homeowners and insurers by giving homeowners the knowledge and tools needed to empower themselves so that they can get every penny owed them and claim victory. Discover the secrets to homeowner insurance settlement with the only step-by-step guide to property insurance claims written by an insurance insider. Exposing little-known methods that enable you to expedite your claim and get every penny owed you, The Claim Game is your comprehensive resource for homeowners insurance and property damage claims. The Claim Game will teach you how to: - Settle claims quickly and fairly. - Reduce or eliminate your deductible. - Decipher a policy so it makes sense. - Discover hidden coverages that protect you and save money. - Organize claim information to expedite your claim. - Get a denied claim covered. - Understand an estimate from a contractor or an insurer. - Select the right contractor to repair your home or property. Also included: - Claim-specific guidance for many types of losses including hurricane, tornado, earthquake, hail, fire and many others. - An in-depth exploration of the most common issues and concerns homeowners encounter. Don't let what you DON'T know cost you!




Are You Ready?


Book Description

Accompanying CD-ROM contains additional supporting materials, sample electronic slide presentations, and other resources.




Catastrophe Risk Financing in Developing Countries


Book Description

'Catastrophe Risk Financing in Developing Countries' provides a detailed analysis of the imperfections and inefficiencies that impede the emergence of competitive catastrophe risk markets in developing countries. The book demonstrates how donors and international financial institutions can assist governments in middle- and low-income countries in promoting effective and affordable catastrophe risk financing solutions. The authors present guiding principles on how and when governments, with assistance from donors and international financial institutions, should intervene in catastrophe insurance markets. They also identify key activities to be undertaken by donors and institutions that would allow middle- and low-income countries to develop competitive and cost-effective catastrophe risk financing strategies at both the macro (government) and micro (household) levels. These principles and activities are expected to inform good practices and ensure desirable results in catastrophe insurance projects. 'Catastrophe Risk Financing in Developing Countries' offers valuable advice and guidelines to policy makers and insurance practitioners involved in the development of catastrophe insurance programs in developing countries.




Dull Disasters?


Book Description

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Dull Disasters? shows how countries and their partners can better prepare for natural disasters such as typhoons, earthquakes, floods, and drought. By harnessing lessons from finance, political science, economics, psychology, and the naturalsciences, it is possible for governments, civil society, private firms, and international organizations to work together to achieve better preparedness, thereby reducing the risks to people and economies and enablingquicker recoveries. In this way, responses to disasters become less emotional, less political, less headline-grabbing, and more business as usual and effective.







The RED Guide for Recovery


Book Description

The Red Guide to Recovery: Resource Handbook for Disaster Survivors was created specifically to help individuals and families navigate through the days, weeks, and months that follow a disaster, while raising awareness of the many pitfalls that may present themselves in post-disaster scenarios.




A Citizen's Guide to Disaster Assistance


Book Description

IS-7 Course Overview This independent study course provides a basic understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the local community, State, and the federal government in providing disaster assistance. It is appropriate for both the general public and those involved in emergency management who need a general introduction to disaster assistance. CEUs: 1.0 Course Length: 10 hours




Repairing Your Flooded Home


Book Description

When in doubt, throw it out. Don't risk injury or infection. 2: Ask for help. Many people can do a lot of the cleanup and repairs discussed in this book. But if you have technical questions or do not feel comfortable doing something, get professional help. If there is a federal disaster declaration, a telephone "hotline" will often be publicized to provide information about public, private, and voluntary agency programs to help you recover from the flood. Government disaster programs are there to help you, the taxpayer. You're paying for them; check them out. 3: Floodproof. It is very likely that your home will be flooded again someday. Floodproofing means using materials and practices that will prevent or minimize flood damage in the future. Many floodproofing techniques are inexpensive or can be easily incorporated into your rebuilding program. You can save a lot of money by floodproofing as you repair and rebuild (see Step 8).




Disaster Resilience


Book Description

No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.




Delay, Deny, Defend


Book Description

An expose of insurance injustice and a plan for consumers and lawmakers to fight it Over the last two decades, insurance has become less of a safety net and more of a spider's web: sticky and complicated, designed to ensnare as much as to aid. Insurance companies now often try to delay payment of justified claims, deny payment altogether, and defend these actions by forcing claimants to enter litigation. Jay M. Feinman, a legal scholar and insurance expert, explains how these trends developed, how the government ought to fix the system, and what the rest of us can do to protect ourselves. He shows that the denial of valid claims is not occasional or accidental or the fault of a few bad employees. It's the result of an increasing and systematic focus on maximizing profits by major companies such as Allstate and State Farm. Citing dozens of stories of victims who were unfairly denied payment, Feinman explains how people can be more cautious when shopping for policies and what to do when pursuing a disputed claim. He also lays out a plan for the legal reforms needed to prevent future abuses. This exposé will help drive the discussion of this increasingly hot- button issue.