‘No insurance payment can fully cover the cost of having a car repaired,’ director of Autoservice Vladimir Maryanov said to UrBC.

The businessman reports there are some unwritten rules that the insurers and the claim adjusters adhere to:

‘No insurance company will ever work with an adjuster who proposes payment amounts that are greater than a certain figure. Experts look into the visible damage, yet there are some hidden defects that can only be detected later on. An experienced adjuster can often see these problems from the start, but they would normally ignore them. In case a car owner asks the insurers to see for themselves that the actual damage is more serious than what the adjuster may have determined, the insurance sum may undergo certain changes after all,’ he adds.

Vladimir Maryanov says most Yekaterinburg-based insurers are subsidiaries of Moscow companies who dictate their terms to the local players. Their calculation always results in the sums that are smaller than the car owner’s actual expenses.

‘This is typical of Ingosstrakh; Severnaya Kazna and ROSNO are also hard to work with,’ he notes.