Insurance Bad Faith

People get insurance as a safeguard against economic loss or property damage. Insurance policies, whether they involve your health, property, life or disability insurance, are in place solely to ensure that you feel guarded against catastrophic financial burden. However, insurance companies have been known to dishonor the terms of these policies while their customers suffer.

Bad Faith Tactics

It's useful to know how and why insurance companies may choose not to uphold their duties, and it may not come as much surprise that these reasons usually involve money. Here are a few ways insurance companies seek to guard their profits:

• Deliberately misinterpreting the language in their own policies or records. This common occurrence happens because insurance companies are often left to their own devices when it comes to telling you what the complicated jargon in your policy means, even if their interpretation may be wrong.
• Unreasonably delay claim resolutions. These kinds of delays only serve to prolong the discomfort and/or uncertainty you're dealing with while you wait for someone to take action.
• Make meaningless demands regarding proof of loss, property, health, or otherwise. Imagine your roof has been significantly damaged and therefore requires a sizable portion of money to fix. Your homeowner's insurance policy promises to pay for these fixes, too. However, you're asked to jump through countless hoops to prove the damage requires their help.
• Ask you to contribute a settlement when you do not have to. These demands can come out of the blue and should by no means be tolerated if your policy states that such a settlement isn't your obligation.

These are all red flags indicating bad faith on the part of your insurance company, each requiring swift action to save you from serious ramifications.