New York reports more than 270,000 insurance claims paid after Sandy

From the Associated Press

"More than 270,000 claims have been paid by 24 insurers since Hurricane Sandy damaged and flooded Staten Island and other parts of New York City as well as Long Island and its suburbs last fall, New New York officials report."

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"The average time from claims report to inspection ranged from three days for Arch Insurance Group, with 242 commercial claims, to 20 days for State Farm with 55,592 claims, noting its wide array of claims, complexity and damage severity.

The report cited 2,478 consumer complaints. The department has directed three insurers with complaint rates near 2 percent to explain them."

According to the report, volume at the high end was 81,507 claims received by Allstate, with 70,936 paid and 62,786 of those closed so far. Another 11,156 were closed without payment. The average time from claim to inspection was almost eight days, then an average of 10 days after that for an estimate and another three days for a claim payment. The company had 78 adjusters in the field. It received 528 consumer complaints, or 0.65 percent.

The department sent letters to Narragansett Bay Insurance Co., which received 11,029 claims, closed 8,882 with payments and 1,356 without payments, averaged 10 days from claim to estimate and another six days to payment, and received 147 complaints, or 1.33 percent.

Another letter went to Tower Group, which received 16,777 claims, closed 10,716 with payments and 4,765 without, and averaged 35 days from claim to payment. It had 249 complaints, or almost 1.5 percent.

The third letter went to Kingstone Insurance Co., which had 3,137 claims, closed 1,737 with payments and 1,170 without and received 66 complaints, or 2.1 percent, according to the department.

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