We speak to Jeffrey Salmon about how he and the team at Salmon Assessors believe many dental practices who made a successful Covid-19 business interruption claim are owed further settlement.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself
I’m Jeff Salmon and I’m a bit of a serial entrepreneur. I was actually brought up in the art world and throughout the seventies became an art dealer. Even today, I’m very much involved in the art world, but we have different businesses within the group.
A very early business of ours was the business of insurance loss assessing. It’s a tiny business and very, very niche.
What is a loss assessor?
The best way to explain this is to discuss what a loss adjuster is first.
As soon as you have a flood, a fire, a burglary, the first thing an insurance company does is to instruct loss adjusters.
Loss adjusters are the kind guys that come down from the insurance company. They are meant to be independent, they are meant to help you, but, in fact, they are working and are paid by the insurance company themselves.
Their function is to pay out the least possible amount because the more they save the insurance companies, the more they will be paid and the more the insurance company will use that particular firm of loss adjusters.
We are loss assessors and a loss assessor only acts for claimants. Are we independent? The answer is no, because to be independent, you need to represent both sides fair and square. We are only interested in the claimant to ensure that they get every last penny they are entitled to under the terms and conditions of their insurance policy.
During the pandemic, you represented upwards of 720 dental practices. How exactly did you help?
We were approached by a particular Facebook group that had been set up by two dentists – both with different insurance policies.
One of the insurance companies were paying out straight away – they accepted their responsibilities – while the other insurance company didn’t.
The Financial Conduct Authority took them to court. The companies that took this stance, the High Court found against them.
All dentists and 370,000 small and medium sized businesses found that their claim was going to be paid.
However, they then turned around and said they are going to the Supreme Court. It took about a year – just under – and the Supreme Court found exactly the same as the High Court. They’ve had to pay out to 370,000 small businesses and honour their claims as they should have done right from the very beginning
Insurance companies have kept our clients, the dentists and many other thousands, waiting a year for this decision. It caused extreme distress and mental health issues.
So how do we help?
Yes, it’s good the insurance companies have paid out. However, we believe that they should be paying out our clients – in this case, dentists – for the time that they had to wait for the money.
No other insurance loss assessor, no other insurance company and no other loss adjuster knows how to do what we have done. We call it BI Claimback.
Why should people go to you rather than do it themselves?
There’s a lovely saying by a former Lord Chancellor and he said ‘that a man who acts as his own solicitor has a fool for the client’.
When I need my tooth pulled out, I won’t go to a GP, I’ll go to a dental specialist. I also wouldn’t go to court without a solicitor.
I’m suggesting to everyone, not just dentists, that if you have a claim, get someone on your side who knows what they’re doing. Whether it be us, or whether it be any of our competitors.
What’s more, there’s a risk that we may have to go to court ourselves. It’s unlikely, but if we do we have to have one and a half million pounds ready. So we have put our money our mouth where our mouth is.
Am I in any doubt whatsoever that we will get payment for every single one of our clients? My glass is always full. It’s not half full. I am in absolute no doubt that everybody that we represent will be paid.
And what is there to lose? There’s no further settlement and no fee. We’re not asking for any monies if we are abject failures. There is nothing that the dentist or any of our clients will lose.
For more information or to find out how much you could be owed, visit www.insuranceclaims.co.uk and www.BIclaimback.co.uk.
