Do you need a loss assessor, or can you do it yourself?

A loss assessor takes over your insurance claim and negotiates for you, for a slice of your payout, typically around 10% plus VAT. Sometimes that fee is the best money you'll ever spend. Often it pays for documentation and persistence you could supply yourself. Almost everything written on this question is written by assessor firms, whose answer is predictably "yes, hire one". Here is the honest arithmetic they don't publish.

What a loss assessor actually does for the fee

Strip away the marketing and an assessor's work has four parts:

1. Scoping the loss. Surveying the damage and building a full schedule of everything claimable, including things people forget, like alternative accommodation, professional fees and contents you only miss weeks later.
2. Evidencing it. Photographs, inventories, proof of ownership, itemised reinstatement costs at realistic market rates rather than the insurer's panel rates.
3. Negotiating. Dealing with the insurer's loss adjuster, contesting the scope of works line by line, and pushing back on lowball figures.
4. Process grind. Chasing, documenting every exchange, keeping the claim moving, and knowing when to escalate.

All four are valuable. None are magic. Items 1, 2 and 4 are diligence; item 3 is expertise that matters most when the sums are large and the insurer is dug in.

It also helps to know what an assessor is not: they are not a lawyer, they cannot compel the insurer to do anything, and they have no special standing with the ombudsman. Their leverage is the same leverage available to you: a well-documented file, policy knowledge, and the credible threat of a complaint the insurer must answer.

The fee maths

The Association of British Insurers reports insurers paid £3.4 billion across more than 560,000 home claims in 2025, an average of about £6,000 per claim, with the average flood payout around £30,000. At a typical 10% + VAT, the assessor's cut looks like this:

Fee levels of 10% + VAT, ranging roughly 5–15% by claim size, are published by the larger firms themselves; see Morgan Clark and Oakleafe. Smaller claims usually sit at the top of the range or attract minimum fees, which is exactly where the fee is hardest to justify.

The break-even question is simple: will professional negotiation improve your settlement by more than the fee? On a £60,000 fire claim with a disputed scope of works, quite possibly. On a £6,000 escape-of-water claim where the facts are clean, the assessor must find £720 of extra settlement just for you to break even.

When an assessor genuinely earns the fee

• Major losses (serious fires, floods, subsidence) where the scope of works runs to tens of thousands and small percentage improvements outweigh the fee.
• Alternative accommodation disputes, where you're negotiating months of living costs while displaced.
• Deadlocked or hostile claims, where the insurer has stopped engaging and you no longer have the stomach for the fight.
• Claims you genuinely cannot run: you're abroad, unwell, or managing a bereavement alongside the loss.

If that's your situation, choose carefully: check the firm on the FCA Financial Services Register, get the fee basis in writing, and ask what happens to the fee if the claim is declined.

The "free" loss assessor model

The DIY route: doing an assessor's job yourself

Most claims (remember, the average is around £6,000) are entirely runnable by the policyholder. What makes the difference isn't professional status; it's doing what an assessor would do:

1. Know your policy before you argue about it. Coverage, exclusions, conditions, limits, excesses. This is where claims are actually won and lost, and it's the step most people skip because policy wordings are painful to read. It's also the step where you have help: upload your policy to Roci and it reads the wording for you: what's covered, what's excluded, which conditions bite, and what evidence your claim will need.
2. Document like a professional. Photograph and video everything before clean-up. Build an item-by-item inventory with ages, values and proof of ownership. Keep damaged materials until the insurer confirms in writing they're not needed, the same discipline as preparing for the loss adjuster's visit.
3. Get itemised quotes. Two or three line-item quotes from your own contractors anchor every later negotiation. Insurers' figures are built line by line; challenge them line by line, and our guide to challenging a low offer shows how.
4. Keep a written record. Confirm every call by email. Note names, dates and what was agreed. This file is your leverage later.
5. Use the free escalation ladder. Assessors' quiet leverage is the insurer knowing a complaint is coming. You have the same lever: a formal complaint the insurer must answer within eight weeks, then the ombudsman, which is free and upholds a meaningful share of home insurance complaints.

Be clear-eyed about why diligence matters: the FCA's recent review found home insurers accepted only 74% of contents claims, against 99% for motor, and found significant failings in how some firms handled cash settlements. Well-documented claims survive that environment; thin ones don't.

Questions to ask before you sign with an assessor

If you do decide the claim justifies professional help, ten minutes of due diligence protects you from the worst of the market:

1. "Are you FCA authorised, and what's your firm reference number?" Then check it yourself on the register. No number, no deal.
2. "What exactly is the fee, and what is it calculated on?" Gross settlement or net of excess? Does it apply to money the insurer had already offered before you appointed them?
3. "What happens to the fee if the claim is declined, or if I cancel?" Get cancellation terms and any minimum fee in writing before signing.
4. "Who does the repair work?" If the answer is "our contractors" on a no-fee deal, ask what happens if you want your own builder, and what the fee becomes then.
5. "Who will actually handle my claim, and how often will I hear from you?" The person who wins the pitch is not always the person who runs the file.

An assessor who answers all five crisply is probably worth talking to. One who gets vague about fees or the register is telling you everything you need to know.

A simple decision framework

• Claim under ~£10,000, facts straightforward → run it yourself with the discipline above. The fee is hard to recover.
• Claim £10,000–£30,000 → start yourself; appoint an assessor only if the insurer becomes unreasonable, since you can bring one in mid-claim.
• Major loss (£30,000+), complex scope, or alternative accommodation in play → interview two or three assessor firms, check the FCA register, compare fee bases.
• Any size, already rejected → the next step isn't necessarily an assessor: work through what to do after a rejection first, because the complaint and ombudsman route costs nothing.

Whichever branch you take, the work you do in the first fortnight (photographs before clean-up, an item-by-item inventory, a clear grasp of your own policy wording) is never wasted. It makes a DIY claim winnable, it makes an assessor cheaper to brief and harder to shortchange, and it is exactly the file the ombudsman will want to see if the claim ever gets that far.

Where to go next

• Loss adjuster vs loss assessor: who's on your side?
• Insurance settlement offer too low? How to challenge it
• Cash settlement or repair: know before you accept
• Home insurance claim rejected? What to do next