Resources · The whole process
Your claim stalled somewhere between the estimate and the check, and the paperwork is using words nobody defined. This page walks the whole appraisal process once, plainly, and points to the article that goes deep at whichever stage you're standing on. Read the first two sections before the rest. They decide whether the rest applies to you.
Appraisal is a process built into most property insurance policies, and it answers one question. What is the covered damage worth?
That's the entire assignment. Two appraisers value the loss independently, an umpire decides whatever they can't close, and under most policy language the resulting award sets the amount of loss.
Everything else stays where it was standing. A panel doesn't decide whether a loss was covered, and it can't revive a claim the carrier declined. That's the fact every section below rests on, and the reason some readers should stop here.
This page is an informational overview of a process found in most Ohio property policies. It isn't legal advice, and your policy's exact language controls everything described below. Ironclad Assessment Group serves as a neutral appraiser and umpire. We're not a public adjuster, and we don't adjust, negotiate, interpret your policy, or settle claims.
Almost everybody arrives with the same sentence in their head. The check came up short. One sentence, three very different problems underneath it. Each takes a different route.
The first is a disagreement about the amount of a covered loss. The insurer accepted the claim, both sides agree the policy responds, and they're apart on what putting the property back is worth. That's the door appraisal opens, and the only one.
Coverage is the second door. Whether the policy responds to the loss at all. A panel has no role in any of that, and no honest appraiser will suggest otherwise. That's attorney territory, and the deadlines don't wait.
Then there's how the claim was handled. That one is about conduct rather than about the figure. Ohio has a state agency that takes complaints of that kind, and that path runs alongside the other two.
Which of the three you're having is worked out at length on its own page. Read that first if you aren't certain.
Three arguments do nearly all the work. Scope is the list of what's in the loss at all. Price is what that work costs here, this year, at what crews around central Ohio charge. Then depreciation, the subtraction for the life the material had already spent the day the loss happened.
Two figures carry those arguments. Replacement cost value is what the work costs to do now. Actual cash value is that figure with depreciation taken out.
Each of those terms is defined properly on the glossary page, with what each one is really arguing about.
Nothing moves until somebody puts it in writing.
A demand for appraisal is short. It goes to the carrier with the claim number on it, and it states that you're invoking the appraisal provision to resolve the amount of loss. From there the clause runs a clock, since most clauses give each side a window to name an appraiser. Twenty days is a common figure. Common isn't universal, and your clause is the one that counts.
Either side can invoke it. Carriers do.
The full walkthrough, from the written demand through the award, has its own page.
There are three chairs, and only two are filled at the start.
You name an appraiser, and the insurer names its own. Both are supposed to be competent and impartial, which some policies phrase as disinterested. Those two words carry real weight. What each one means, and why the way somebody gets paid bears on it, are set out in the glossary.
The third chair sits empty unless the two appraisers can't close the gap. An umpire takes it then and decides only the items still open. Whatever the two already settled stays settled.
Almost nobody slows down for that step, and it's the one worth slowing down for, because the two appraisers choose who sits there, and that person resolves what's left. How the selection works is covered on its own page. The role itself is explained separately.
One distinction belongs here, since the titles blur. A public adjuster is engaged to represent a policyholder and handle the whole claim, which is different work paid a different way.
The process doesn't change with the loss. Where two valuations pull apart does.
Hail and wind arguments usually start with the list rather than the price. Soft metals dent before a shingle bruises, and repair or replace is often the largest gap between the two numbers.
Water generates two money documents that get conflated, a mitigation invoice for work already done and a repair estimate for work nobody has started. A water file also meets a sentence about how long the leak had been running, and that sentence can change which door you're standing at.
Fire behaves like three claims sharing one file, since the structure, the contents inventory, and the time out of the house are valued in ways that have almost nothing to do with each other. That's much of why fire claims sit long after coverage is settled.
Commercial changes the building itself. Low-slope membrane behaves nothing like shingles, and the party whose property got damaged isn't always the party holding the policy.
A short document comes back with a figure at the bottom. Under most policy language, signatures from any two of the three panel members set the amount of loss.
What that document does and doesn't reach is the part people get wrong, and it decides what happens next on your claim. Whether an award is binding, what survives it untouched, and where objections to one come from are taken apart on their own page.
Under most property policy language, each side pays the appraiser it appoints, and when an umpire is needed the two sides typically share that fee. That surprises people, since one side's costs don't shift to the other. What drives the size of the work, and why a fee tied to the award weakens the number it produces, are worked through on the cost page.
Ironclad serves as a party-appointed appraiser or as an umpire on property losses in Columbus and across central Ohio, never both roles on the same matter. Our fee is set in writing before the engagement begins and never depends on the size of the award. The full picture of what we do as appraiser and umpire is on the services page.
Appraisal has edges, and they're worth knowing before you spend anything on it.
It doesn't decide coverage, and it doesn't interpret what a provision in your policy means. A denial sits outside it. An appraiser who offers to reach any of that is standing outside the role.
If some part of your disagreement lives on that side of the line, the person to call is a policyholder-side insurance attorney, and the useful word is soon. Most property policies carry a suit-limitation clause, which is a deadline for filing legal action, and Ohio law sets limits of its own alongside it. Those clocks run whether or not anybody is watching, and they keep running while a file sits.
The carrier's own letters usually sort it. A letter saying an item wasn't damaged is a disagreement about the loss and what it's worth. A letter saying an item isn't covered is a coverage position, and appraisal doesn't reach those. Where the wording is genuinely ambiguous, the ambiguity itself is a reason to have a lawyer look at it.
With your policy, and specifically the paragraph usually titled Appraisal in the Conditions section. It's short, and it sets the window for naming an appraiser and says what happens if the two can't agree on an umpire. Everything on this page sits downstream of it.
Not always, and a firm that only ever says yes isn't being straight with you. Each side pays the appraiser it names, so the process carries a cost regardless of where the number lands. Nobody can judge from the outside whether yours is a gap worth the process.
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We serve Columbus, Dublin, Powell, and communities across central Ohio, and surrounding areas on request. Write to us with where your claim stands and we'll tell you plainly whether it's a fit for what we do.
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