What A Public Adjuster Actually Does
There are three kinds of adjuster and only one of them works for you. Here is what a public adjuster is licensed to do, what the work looks like week by week, and the claims where hiring one is not worth it.
Most property owners meet their first adjuster on the worst week of their year, and nobody explains that the friendly person on the roof is not on their side. They are not against you either. They work for the company that pays the claim, and that is a different thing from working for you.
There are three kinds:
- Staff adjuster - an employee of the insurance company.
- Independent adjuster - a contractor hired by the insurance company, usually surged in after a catastrophe.
- Public adjuster - licensed by the state to represent the policyholder, and paid by the policyholder.
Only the third one is yours.
What the license allows
A public adjuster license is what permits someone to negotiate a claim on your behalf. In Colorado that is a Division of Insurance license with its own examination, bond, continuing education and firm licensing requirements.
Two consequences people do not expect:
Your contractor cannot legally do this. A roofer who "handles the insurance company for you" is negotiating a claim on someone else's behalf without a license. Contractors can inspect, estimate and build. They cannot adjust.
Nor can a friend, a consultant or a claims coach. If someone is negotiating with your carrier and is not you, your lawyer or a licensed public adjuster, something is wrong.
What the work actually is
The word "negotiation" makes it sound like haggling. It is almost entirely documentation. On a typical file:
Read the policy first. Declarations page, forms, endorsements, limits, sub-limits, deductibles, ordinance or law, business income, loss of rents, matching endorsements, cosmetic exclusions. This is where the claim is won or lost and it happens before anybody goes on a roof.
Re-inspect and document independently. Test squares, elevations, soft metals, interiors, moisture readings, and increasingly 3D capture on large losses. The documentation method.
Build a complete scope in the same estimating software the carrier uses, so the argument is about the loss rather than about the format.
Quantify what is not on the estimate - code upgrades under ordinance or law, overhead and profit where multiple trades are involved, matching, debris removal, mitigation, contents, additional living expenses, business income and extra expense on a commercial file.
Handle the correspondence. Notice of representation, requests for the claim file and reserve, the certified policy, supplements, rebuttals to denials, sworn proofs of loss, and the deadline tracking that goes with all of it.
Escalate when it stalls - supervisor, manager, Division of Insurance complaint, or invoking the appraisal clause where only the amount is in dispute.
Close it out - final invoice, recoverable depreciation released, and everything documented.
What a public adjuster cannot do
- Give legal advice or file suit. That is a lawyer.
- Make coverage exist. If the peril is excluded, it is excluded. A good public adjuster tells you that on the first call rather than after the fee agreement.
- Perform the repairs. Adjusting your own claim and then building the job is a conflict of interest; be cautious of anyone offering both.
- Guarantee an outcome. Anyone who guarantees a number is selling.
When it is worth it
Hire one when:
- The claim was denied and you do not believe the reason.
- The estimate is missing whole trades or systems you can see.
- The building is commercial, multi-family, HOA, school district or municipal - these have layered coverages, business income, loss of rents and ordinance-or-law exposure that consumer files do not.
- There is a large or total loss, where the scope is beyond what anyone can hold in their head.
- The file has gone quiet for weeks and nobody returns calls.
- You are out of your depth or out of time, which is a perfectly good reason on its own.
Do not hire one when the loss is small, the carrier agreed it, and the estimate is complete. The full decision.
How you are protected
In Colorado a public adjuster must be licensed, must contract with you in writing, must disclose the fee, and you have a statutory right to rescind the contract within three days of signing. That cooling-off period is not a formality - it exists so that nobody signs a claim away on their front step at nine at night.
Before you sign anything: verify the license yourself. It takes two minutes and it is public record.
What it costs
A public adjuster is paid a percentage of what is recovered, not an hourly rate, and not up front. What that percentage is, when it applies, and whether it applies to money already paid before you hired anyone - those are the questions that matter and they are all in the contract. The full breakdown, including the questions to ask.
The rest of this guide
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