That's all exciting and figurative from the word of a figure/number until you claim the insurance.
Here is my story of the experience dealing with an insurance company claiming for damage to a commercial drone.
I am a small business owner. I hold $20M public liability insurance policy and the
DJI drone cover for an agreed value with
Precision Autonomy Insurance Pty Ltd (PAI). I note that whilst PAI is an insurance company, they are not a member of
Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA).
Like most insurance companies PAI tries to minimise recovery costs for insured items. So, rather than pay me the agreed value for a replacement drone, they proceeded to seek quotations for it to be repaired. It transpired that no assessment company would deal with such as small commercial drone, therefore my damaged drone was dispatched directly to
DJI for assessment. Originally, I was not allowed to have any direct contact with DJI. However, once the assessment was completed, and the settlement value agreed, PAI just settled the claim and left me to deal with the repairs myself. In the end DJI made the right call and sent me a replacement drone, however that was not because of the PAI’s efforts or decisions.
Most of my frustration stemmed from the fact that on one hand PIA appears to be severely understaffed (evert attempt to get a progress update took many days), on the other hand they are incredibly hierarchical. When it finally came to the settlement, the pay-out had to go through at least three levels of reviews and approvals. It took 133 days from the claim lodgment for the claim to be settled and, in all, 144 days until I received the replacement drone. PIA also attempted to exclude the GST from the claim. As a result, my losses, as a small business owner, were significant.
Here is the events timeline:
23 November 23 - claim for the crashed RPA (drone) was submitted.
04 December 23 - the assessment company (DJI) received the drone.
09 January 24 - PAI received the repair quotation.
04 April 24 – Settlement transferred into my bank account; I paid DJI directly for the drone to be repaired.
15 April 24 - received replacement drone from DJI.