Company Offers Calculator to Estimate Salvage Value

Responding to adjuster requests for a quick and easy way to find out an item’s salvage value, Tru-Markets, an investment recovery company, has developed the first estimating calculator for commercial salvage.

“We’ve been conducting a series of webinars, Eight Ways to Supercharge Your Salvage Recovery, and after the webinars adjusters kept asking us ‘Can you give us a salvage estimate on the claim?’ and, of course, we’d go and do that. We thought what if we build a self-service tool that anyone can use anywhere in the world,” Farrell said.

In an interview with Claims Journal, Chad Farrell explained how the calculator works, the value of the free tool for on-the-go adjusters, and the impact it may have in assisting adjusters working on Isaac storm claims.

The free calculator is available on the company’s website and can be used on the web, on mobile devices and even placed as a widget on an insurer’s intranet website to enable easy access for claims adjusters, Farrell said.

The Salvage Estimator considers five questions – type of claim, cause of loss, loss location, physical condition and type of item – allowing adjusters to choose from drop down box answers, and then provides an estimated value in real time.

“It takes five factors into account. In our research and phone calls with adjusters, we found those five factors to be the most important ones in determining the salvage estimate,” Farrell said.

Farrell said that if adjusters have a unique salvage item, they can still call the company to obtain a salvage estimate.

In addition to receiving an estimate in real-time, adjusters can print out a report in order to document the claim file.

Farrell said the cloud-based program can be customized by tying it into a specific insurer’s data.

The Tru-Markets salvage calculator can be accessed by going to the company’s website via this link: http://www.tru-markets.com/salvage-estimator