Originally Posted by
Azorian
Just tossing this into the ring in case anyone is interested.
From 2002 to 2005 i was an instructor, flew part 121 2005 - 2009 and decided that the decade long upgrade and the sub 30K a year salary in the mean time wasnt for me.
In 2011 i was between full time jobs and i was flight instructing when one of my students who was a catastrophe insurance adjuster suggested i give it a shot.
I took an online course that took about a month, applied for a state casualty and property adjuster's license, and applied for a job with an independent catastrophe services firm. I got hired and did about 60 days of on the job training
What these firms do is carry contracts with major insurance companies like Geico, Allstate, Farmers and State Farm etc.
Basically, all of those insurance companies have their own staff adjusters, but when a major hail storm sweeps through Memphis, TN and damages 5,000 homes... they just dont have the personnel on site to inspect all the damaged homes in a timely manner.
At this point, they call one (or more) of their contracted firms and request supplemental personnel that have been trained on their policies and procedures. The insurance company may need 50 adjusters. In turn the independent firm would call me, and several other guys from our firm and "deploy" us to the affected city.
once there, hotel or RV park stay is out of pocket and we have to provide our own transportation and ladder and equipment but the insurance company lends us laptops, printers, cameras etc.
we would receive a list of perhaps 100 customers with insured homes who had filed claims of storm damage, call and schedule them for inspection, drive out to the home and inspect the damage, write an estimate and issue a check for the covered amount and drive to the next house and repeat.
I did this for 7 years, the money is great, but it is a lot of time on the road and is handy to have a travel trailer or fifth wheel
basically the pay is set up on a component / commission basis
you bill every "component" of your inspection, or if the damage total exceeds $20,000 you receive a 3.8% commission - you keep 65% of the total billed amount
for example
Base charge.............. $140
Interior damage........ $100
Exterior damage....... $85
2 story roof.............. $50
outbuilding............... $50 (each)
total........................ $425
inspect 5 homes a day as outlined above you brought home $1,381 for the day. average is about $1000 a day for a six day work week for an organized experienced adjuster... probably closer to $500-700 for a newbie
assume its a big house with a total roof loss and the claim total is $35,000, your commission would be $864 on that one home.
average inspection time is 2 hours paperwork and all
My average year would ramp up in about early March, and i would just deploy from city to city until things got slow in October or November.
average income is around $180,000 - 210,000 per year.
during the off season (November - March) you pretty much can do whatever you want
some of the more experienced guys just hit two or three towns between March and June, knock about $100,000 out of the park in that span of time and mark themselves unavailable the rest of the year to work on motorcycles or flip houses etc.
anyhow. if anyone is interested, feel free to PM me any time