You should know who will pick up the phone, what they have handled, who else is brought in, and who is accountable when a claim goes badly.
The advisory practice came first. The claims desk is what it grew.
Rakshit Financial Services has been placing commercial and personal insurance since 2004, as an IRDAI-registered insurance advisor. Running the claim was always part of that: an advisor who places a policy and then goes quiet when it is called on has done half a job.
Claims Desk is the name for that half of the work, put on its own footing so it can also be offered to businesses whose policy somebody else placed. Same people, same files, one number.
The desk works on claims across India. A claim does not need us in the room, it needs us on the file, and most of what decides one is documents and argument, not attendance. Where the size of a loss warrants it, somebody attends.
Where a loss is somewhere none of the three offices reaches quickly, we instruct somebody who is already there, so nothing waits on a flight.
A claim of any size is not run by one person. It is run by a handful of people with different licences, and knowing which of them works for whom is most of understanding what is happening to your claim.
The desk keeps its own panel of them: licensed surveyors, independent loss assessors, chartered engineers, registered valuers, forensic accountants and counsel, in India and in most other places a loss is likely to happen. They are chosen by the weight their report carries with an insurer rather and not by how near they happen to be, and a good many of them are names the other side already knows.
Appointed by the insurer, not by you and not by us, and licensed by IRDAI. Their report largely decides the claim. What the desk does is prepare the site and the papers before they attend, go with you, and answer the report in writing where it is wrong.
On your side of the table, where the surveyor is not. Prepares and argues the quantum, item by item, against the assessment the insurer is working to.
Cause and extent on machinery, electrical failure and structures. On a breakdown claim the argument is almost always about what failed first, and that is an engineer's question and not a lawyer's.
What a building, plant or stock was actually worth on the day. This is where underinsurance is won or lost, and it is worth settling long before a loss, and almost impossible after one.
Business interruption: gross profit, standing charges, the period of indemnity and the trend the business was on. The hardest figure in commercial claims to prove and the easiest to be argued down on.
Where a claim goes past the insurer's own grievance route to the Ombudsman, a consumer forum or a court. Most claims never need one, and we will say so when yours does not.
Every claim has one person who owns it and whose number you have. You are given that name on the first call and it stays on your claim file from the day it opens. What you will never be given is a ticket number and whoever happens to pick up.
If your claim is going badly you should know exactly whom that is a problem for, and you will.
Whoever placed your policy, and whatever stage the claim has reached.