Do Appraisers Legally Need to Be Licensed Adjusters in Florida?

A public adjuster from Arizona, David Young, sent me a Florida Administrative matter for my review. He indicated it appeared that Florida was requiring parties to an appraisal to hire licensed adjusters or public adjusters.

The Petitioner is the Florida Department of Financial Services, and one of the paragraphs in the Consent Order stated:

Respondent shall not engage in appraisals related to claims governed by the Florida Insurance Code without licensure and appointment as an adjuster; given that Petitioner maintains that such appraisals are governed by the requirements for adjuster licensure.

This would almost be a “new one on me” except that I wrote about a somewhat similarly crazy interpretation by Oklahoma insurance regulators in,
Is A Licensed Public Adjuster Disqualified To Act As An Appraiser For Somebody Other Than A Policyholder? There I wrote:

Public adjuster Stephanie Lee approached me at the Win The Storm conference with an intriguing question—could she be appointed by a contractor holding an Assignment of Claim as the contractor’s appraiser in an appraisal? My first thought, and I bet it is the same thought most reading this blog, was ‘why not?’

Most states only require a person to be of sound mind and body, not employed by either party or related by blood and without a direct financial interest in the outcome, to be an appraiser. There are many variants to this rule, usually involving bias, but this is the one relevant for this discussion.

Appraisers in an insurance appraisal proceeding are not adjusters. They are not adjusting the claim. Adjusting a claim is very different from what participants in an appraisal are required to do. Maybe insurance regulators need to show up for some continuing education courses at next month’s Windstorm Conference or at an IAUA training seminar to learn more about those differences between adjustment and appraisal and how appraisals are an alternative dispute resolution process.

Thought For The Day

When one cannot appraise out of one’s own experience, the temptation to blunder is minimized, but even when one can, appraisal seems chiefly useful as appraisal of the appraiser.
—Marianne Moore