Public adjuster
Definition
- Related pages
- 5
- Last revised
- 23 August 2026
A public adjuster is an adjuster who works for the policyholder rather than for the insurer. Licensed by the state, retained under a written contract and paid a percentage of what the claim recovers, the public adjuster documents the loss, prepares the proof of loss and the estimate, negotiates with the carrier's adjuster and, where the policy allows, demands appraisal. The role is regulated closely: most states cap the fee, restrict solicitation after a catastrophe, forbid a public adjuster from also being the contractor, and require the contract to be cancellable within a short period.
The public adjuster's work product is the claim file the carrier will read, and the weather exhibit in it is the part the carrier will check first. A public adjuster who names a date of loss the record does not support, or who attaches a weather summary that cannot say where its figures came from, hands the carrier its first objection. One who attaches a record that names its sources, states its method and keeps measured apart from detected has removed the weather from the argument.
The report is written to be that exhibit. It is not an opinion and does not advocate; it is the record, compiled for the address and the period, in a form that the carrier's desk adjuster, an appraisal umpire or a court can read and verify. The advocacy is the public adjuster's; the record is the same whoever attaches it.
In the report
How the document prints it
A public adjuster's name appears in the report only where the requester puts it, in the Prepared for or Requested by lines on the cover and in the statement of compilation. The document itself advocates for no one: its statement of compilation says the records were reproduced as published and were not altered, weighted or selected by hand, and that no opinion is offered on cause, extent or cost. That is what lets the exhibit be attached to a proof of loss or submitted to an appraisal panel without the other side discounting it as the adjuster's own work.
From the record
Which days can be cited with the least argument
- Hail days in the last year
- 250
- One independent source
- 25
- Two sources
- 87
- Three or more
- 138
Since 24 August 2025 the national record holds 250 hail days: 25 carried by one independent source, 87 by two and 138 by three or more. The days a public adjuster can cite with the least argument are in the last group, and the report says which group a day is in.
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
Desk adjuster
An adjuster who handles a claim from an office, from photographs, estimates and records, without inspecting the property in person.
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Term
Proof of loss
The sworn statement a policyholder gives the insurer setting out what was lost, when, and for how much, which the policy may require before it pays.
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Term
Appraisal
The policy procedure for settling a dispute over the amount of a loss through two appraisers and an umpire, without a court.
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Term
Date of loss
The calendar date a claim says the damage occurred, which the storm record either holds a report for or does not.
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Guide
Which storm caused it: attributing damage across several storm days
Most roofs in the hail belt have been under more than one storm, and a claim is rarely argued against a blank record. It is argued against the other days: the one before the policy began, the one the last carrier paid, the one nobody noticed. This guide sets out what the law asks when storms compete for the same damage, how an appraisal panel reads the record, and why the calendar has to be on the table before the argument starts.
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.