Desk adjuster
Definition
- Related pages
- 4
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
A desk adjuster handles a claim without visiting the property. The file arrives as photographs, a contractor's or field adjuster's estimate, the policy, and whatever records the parties supply; the desk adjuster reads them, asks for what is missing, prices the estimate against the carrier's software and decides what to pay. The role grew with catastrophe volume and with the availability of aerial imagery and weather data, and many hail claims are now settled from a desk.
The desk adjuster's first question is usually the weather one. Before the estimate is read, the file is checked against a weather record: whether hail or wind is on record near the address on the date of loss, how large, and how far away. A claim for which the answer is a confident yes moves to the roof; one for which the answer is no, or a date some days off, comes back to the policyholder as a question. The weather check is therefore the fastest point at which a claim is either advanced or stalled.
That is the reader the report is most often written for. A desk adjuster has no time to reconcile sources and no way to visit the roof; what is useful is a document that has already searched the record, kept the measured figures apart from the detected ones, stated its distances and named its sources, so the question can be answered in the order it was asked.
In the report
How the document prints it
The report is arranged in the order a desk adjuster reads: the Summary answers in one sentence, the Findings say what the evidence establishes and how strongly, the Storm map shows where the recorded hail lay around the address, and the Records give each row's date, measurement, distance and bearing from the address and its source with a citation number. A desk adjuster checking a date of loss reads the storm day for that date and the days around it, and one checking distance reads the column that states it for every record. The verification address on the last page confirms the copy in the file is the one issued.
From the record
What a desk can check the file against
- Record from
- 1996
- Independent sources
- 9
- Searched for every address
- 4
- Kinds of evidence
- 4
The record reaches back to 1996 and is carried by 9 independent sources, 4 of them national and searched for every address, across 4 kinds of evidence. That is what a desk adjuster has to read before the estimate; the report reads it first and in that order.
Measured Detected, not measured
The page these figures come fromRelated
The terms this page uses and the guides that go further. Each is shown against its own example from the record.
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Term
CAT claim
A claim filed under a catastrophe designation, when one storm produces enough losses for insurers to open a dedicated response.
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Term
Public adjuster
A licensed adjuster retained by the policyholder, paid a share of the recovery, who prepares and negotiates the claim against the insurer.
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Guide
How far away a hail report can be and still count
A hail report is a point: where a person stood, or where a radar placed a signature. A property is another point. The distance between them is the first thing a reader checks and the first thing a reader misreads. This guide states what a distance establishes, how the report bands it, and why a record filed to a county cannot be measured from at all.
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Term
Independent source
A record-keeping route by which a storm reached the archive, counted once however many rows it produced, so that agreement between routes can be measured.
Sources
The primary references. Each opens on the agency's own site.
The glossary defines the word. The report is what uses it.
Everything above is definition: what the word means in the document, and what it does not. None of it says what reached one roof.
Run the address and the archive is searched at the property: the storm, the date, the measured size, the distance and bearing from the roof, and the federal record each figure came from, in a document that states its own method. About a minute.
How this page is made
- The text
- Written by the editors and last revised 23 August 2026. It explains the record and how the report reads it; it contains no figure of its own.
- The example
- Drawn from the archive when the page was compiled, 24 August 2026, and rebuilt daily as the record deepens. Every figure in the panel marked From the record is computed, not written, and links to the page it came from.
- Measured and detected
- A report from a person or an instrument is measured. A radar-derived size is detected, not measured, and is marked as such, here and in every document we issue. The two are never added together.
- What this is not
- A definition of a word the report uses. It is not a report on any property, and it states no opinion about one. The coverage page states what the record holds, by kind and by year.
About this record
Everything here is reproduced from public federal and volunteer weather records, as the agencies and observer networks that publish them released it. Titan Weather compiles the record; it does not observe the weather, and it is not affiliated with any source it cites.
No archive holds everything. Storms cross places where nobody is standing, instruments and spotters cover some areas better than others, sources revise their records, and recent reports can take weeks to arrive and settle. Where this page shows nothing, nothing was found in the sources searched, within the period and area it states. That is not a finding that no weather occurred.
These pages describe the public record near a place or on a date. They do not establish what reached any particular property, and nothing here is insurance, legal or engineering advice.