Understand the Requirements to Process Home Insurance Claims

Understand the Requirements to Process Home Insurance Claims
I'm Romie Brown. On behalf of Expert Village, I'm here to discuss with you tips and tidbits on how to buy homeowner's insurance. In this clip, we're going to go over claim handling, documentation, inventory and what-not. It's important that the insured provide the proof of ownership. When you have a loss - a break-in, a fire - it is the burden of the insured to prove to the company that they had such items that they're claiming against. So how do you do that? Receipts. Well guess what? Most people don't keep their receipts after so long. Well, if you don't have your receipts, what else do you have? Photos, pictures. Things that prove that you have the TV that you say you lost, the fur coat or what-not. One of the things that I advise my clients to do, is to take a video camera and walk through and narrate through: "This is Romie Brown. I'm walking through my house on blah blah blah blah. This is my big screen television, Sony, blah blah blah, model XYZ, 55 inch" and so on and so forth. Then once you get through going through your whole house - I would do the big ticket items first, and of course usually you don't have a total loss, but it can happen. But do the big ticket items first. Things like jewelry, things like television and stuff, to get you going. It's going to take a while. Especially if you've been in that house for about ten years, five years and so on and so forth. If it's a brand new house, you're starting out brand new, it's very simple for you. Now, you should take that tape, mark it when it's done. Mark it "Insurance Replacement Tape" and keep it at someone else's home. Keep it in a safety deposit box, keep it at your locker at work, or keep it somewhere other than your home. Because just in case you do have a fire of some sort, that way you can use that tape to prove what you have. It's very important that you do this. Because if you do not, then the insurance company will have a hard time believing that you had these things. And then if they can't believe it, then it's going to be hard for them to indemnify you. Make it easier for your agent, for your claims rep, and more importantly for yourself.