One sentence, one list, and one paragraph of your own policy.

What to do

• Send it before the deposit clears, not after. The value is in the date.
• Send it by email to the adjuster, and copy your broker. Email is dated, retained, and attributable in a way that a phone call is not.
• Identify the claim number and the payment amount so the message cannot be detached from what it refers to.
• State plainly that you are not accepting the amount as final and not waiving any right to appeal or supplement.
• Record what you were asked to do next and what you expect to submit — photographs, invoices, proof of payment — so the instruction is in writing too.
• Keep the sent copy. The sent folder is the evidence, not your memory of sending it.
• Do not ask for permission or agreement. This is a notice of your position, not a request for the carrier's consent.

Why nobody tells you

The moment this matters is the moment you are least able to think about it. The rainy season is starting, the damaged envelope is open to weather, tenants are waiting, and a contractor needs a deposit. The adjuster's instruction — take the payment, do the work, send photographs and invoices afterwards — sounds like process rather than a decision point. So the understanding stays verbal, and it stays verbal for however long the claim takes, which can be years.

Verified from submitted document · 1 document · last verified 2026-10-08

One commercial fire claim reviewed, loss 2019. The owner accepted an interim payment on a verbal understanding of exactly this kind and built an appeal on it fifteen months later. The appeal succeeded and the claim was paid in full — the understanding was never put in writing, and it held because the same adjuster remained on the file and recalled it the same way.

What to do

• Ask your broker for the complete policy, not the renewal package. What is normally emailed is declarations plus endorsements; the base coverage form containing the Additional Coverages paragraph is often a separate document that was never sent.
• Read the forms and endorsements schedule first. It lists every form attached to your policy by number, and it is the index to everything that follows.
• Find the Additional Coverages paragraph in the base form, and write down each coverage and its printed limit.
• Then open every endorsement on that schedule and look for any that changes one of those limits. This is the step that gets skipped, and it is the step that changes the number.
• Write your own limits down somewhere you will find them under pressure. The point of doing this now is that you will not do it while a building is open to the weather.
• If you are already in a claim, ask your broker directly which Additional Coverages apply to it. A broker reads these for a living and this is the question they are for.

Why nobody tells you

Three layers have to be read together and nothing cross-references them. The declarations show your building limit and deductible, and say nothing about Additional Coverages. The base coverage form lists those coverages with a limit printed beside each one. And an endorsement attached to the policy — carrying a product name rather than a description of what it does — can multiply that printed limit several times over. An owner reading the coverage form is reading a number that an endorsement has already replaced. An owner reading only the declarations never sees the coverage at all.

Verified from submitted document · 1 document · last verified 2026-10-08

One Businessowners policy reviewed, 2019–20 term, commercial apartment property. The policy carried a claim-data expense coverage, and an endorsement on its forms schedule raised that coverage's limit to five times the figure printed in the base form. In the related claim, coverages of this kind accounted for roughly half of what was ultimately recovered, and the owner learned of them twenty months into the claim.