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Why claims and submissions wait between handoffs

Insurance claim delays add weeks to the policyholder's wait and cost to the carrier, and most of that time passes while a claim or a submission waits for a document, an estimate or a decision between people. Leading carriers are managing each open item in the claim file as an obligation with an owner, a deadline and a cost for every day it stays open.

Financial servicesSegeta Insights
Financial services
The number44 days

from first notice of loss to payment on a homeowners claim

What is at stake

A month of slow claim and underwriting files can cost a regional carrier about $$1.9 million.

Where days are lost
  1. First notice to a complete file
  2. Estimate to decision
  3. Decision to payment

On a Monday, a field adjuster at a regional property and casualty carrier opens a homeowners claim for water damage that was reported 23 days earlier. The inspection is done and the contractor's estimate arrived the previous Friday, attached to an email in a shared claims mailbox. The policyholder has called the contact center three times, the mortgage company still has to be added to the payment, and state rules require a written status letter if the carrier needs more time to decide. Nobody has sent it, because no system shows that the claim has crossed that line.

Delays like this have become the norm across US personal lines. J.D. Power found in its 2025 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study that homeowners waited more than 44 days on average from first notice of loss to final payment, the longest since 2008, and 32.4 days from filing to finished repairs.1 In auto claims, the average repair cycle for drivable vehicles improved to 19.3 days in 2025 from 22.3 days a year earlier, while total losses rose to 27 percent of claims.2 This article traces where claim and underwriting files lose days, estimates what a day of delay costs a composite carrier, and sets out five actions for claims and underwriting leaders.

Speed is now the main driver of claims satisfaction and regulatory exposure

Policyholders judge a claim largely by how long it takes and how well they are kept informed. In the 2025 J.D. Power property study, satisfaction reached 762 points on a 1,000-point scale when the claim was completed within 10 days and fell to 595 when repairs took more than 31 days.1 Satisfaction was 777 when customers found it very easy to communicate with their insurer and 337 when communication was difficult, with frequent complaints about voicemails and missing follow-up messages.1

State insurance law turns these waits into compliance obligations. Under the NAIC Unfair Property/Casualty Claims Settlement Practices Model Regulation, which many states have adopted in some form, an insurer must acknowledge a claim within 15 days, respond to pertinent communications within 15 days and accept or deny a first-party claim within 21 days of receiving proof of loss.3 If the insurer needs more time, it must say so in writing within 21 days and send a further letter every 45 days while the investigation continues.3 A claim that waits in a queue can therefore miss a statutory notice even when the eventual decision is correct.

Homeowners who wait longer than a month are far less satisfied with their insurer.

Exhibit 1Property claims satisfaction falls as the wait lengthensJ.D. Power property claims satisfaction index, 1,000-point scale, 2025
Claim completed within 10 days762
All property claims682
Repairs taking more than 31 days595

Source: J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study, as reported by Insurance Journal, March 2025

Claim and underwriting files lose days at three handoffs

Most of the time a claim spends open is waiting time between the policyholder, the adjuster, vendors and the payment team, and each wait sits in a different system. Underwriting submissions follow the same pattern, since brokers, underwriters and risk engineers exchange documents by email around a policy administration system that records only the final decision.

01First notice to a complete file

A claim arrives by phone, app, agent or email, and the file is complete only when photos, coverage details, inspection reports and estimates are attached. Delay starts when documents arrive in the wrong channel or when an inspection is booked days after the loss was reported.

02Estimate to decision

The adjuster must reconcile contractor estimates, supplements, proof of loss and coverage questions before a decision can be made. Each open item depends on a contractor, an independent adjuster or the policyholder, and the claim moves only as fast as the slowest of them. The same handoff slows commercial underwriting, where Accenture's surveys found that underwriters spend more than a third of their time on non-core work such as data collection and administration.4

03Decision to payment

Once a decision is made, payment may still wait on mortgagee endorsements, contractor invoices, salvage or subrogation steps. Each extra day at this stage extends rental or additional living expense costs and keeps the policyholder calling the contact center.

A connected operating model treats each open item as an obligation

Leading carriers are beginning to manage each open item in a claim or submission as an obligation with an owner, a deadline and a cost for every day it stays open. A live layer reads the systems already in use, including the policy administration and claims systems, estimating platforms, document management, email, text and phone, and runs a four-step loop:

  1. Detect

    a missing estimate, an unanswered policyholder message or an approaching statutory notice the moment it appears in any system or conversation.

  2. Explain

    which item holds the file, who owes it, and which payment, rental day or regulatory deadline it affects.

  3. Recommend

    the next step and its owner, such as a status letter, a vendor escalation or a request to the mortgage servicer.

  4. Execute and track

    every request, response and payment to closure, measuring days open, notices sent on time and calls avoided.

The same record can give policyholders and brokers plain-language status updates by text, email or portal, which the J.D. Power data link to higher satisfaction. Artificial intelligence reads incoming documents, matches them to the claim or submission and drafts letters and requests, while adjusters and underwriters remain accountable for every coverage decision, every payment and every quote.

Insurance claim delays can cost a regional carrier about $$64,000 a day

The cost of a day in claims and underwriting is the indemnity, expense and capacity consumed for each day a file waits between policyholder, adjuster, vendor and underwriter.

A month of slow claim and underwriting files can cost a regional carrier about $$1.9 million.

Exhibit 2. Estimated daily cost of claim and underwriting delays for a composite regional carrier

ComponentBasisEstimate per day
Additional living expense12,000 homeowners claims a year open for about 44 days 1, or about 1,450 open claims; assumes 10 percent of policyholders are displaced at $$250 a dayAbout $$36,000
Underwriting capacity on non-core work120 underwriters at an assumed $$120,000 fully loaded cost and 250 working days; 40 percent of time on non-core activities 4About $$23,000
Rental days on auto claims60,000 repairable auto claims a year, or about 164 completed a day; assumes one extra day each, rental on 40 percent, at $$45 a dayAbout $$3,000
Status callsAssumes 0.2 inbound calls a day for each open property claim, at 10 minutes and $$35 an hourAbout $$1,700
Total per daySum of the four componentsAbout $$64,000

Source: Segeta estimate based on J.D. Power and Accenture data; assumptions are illustrative.

On these assumptions, each day of delay carried across the open inventory costs about $$64,000, or about $$1.9 million over a 30-day month. The estimate excludes regulatory penalties for late notices, the premium lost when a broker places a slow submission elsewhere and the retention cost of dissatisfied policyholders, each of which may exceed the operating cost in a given year.

What claims and underwriting leaders can do now

  1. 01Give every open item an owner and a due date

    Track estimates, documents and approvals against the statutory clocks in each state, so that supervisors see which files are closest to a notice deadline.

  2. 02Send status updates before policyholders call

    Use the claim record to send plain-language updates at each step, since easy communication is linked to much higher satisfaction.

  3. 03Watch the 15, 21 and 45 day clocks by file

    Monitor acknowledgment, decision and written-notice deadlines for every claim and escalate files that are close to any of them.

  4. 04Measure waiting time by handoff

    Report the days each claim spends waiting on the policyholder, the adjuster, vendors and payment, because average cycle time hides where the days are lost.

  5. 05Free underwriters from document chasing

    Route submission intake, data gathering and broker follow-up to a shared workflow, so that underwriters spend their time on risk selection and pricing.

Carriers cannot control the weather, repair capacity or parts supply, yet they control how quickly a missing item is noticed, requested and matched to the file. Carriers that manage every open item as a live, priced obligation are likely to pay claims sooner, meet statutory deadlines with evidence in hand and keep more of the policyholders and brokers they serve.

Questions leaders ask

How long does a homeowners insurance claim take to pay?

J.D. Power's 2025 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study found an average of more than 44 days from first notice of loss to final payment, the longest since 2008. Filing to finished repairs took 32.4 days on average. Timelines vary widely by peril, region and the availability of contractors.

How quickly must an insurer respond to a claim?

Under the NAIC Unfair Property/Casualty Claims Settlement Practices Model Regulation, an insurer should acknowledge a claim within 15 days and accept or deny a first-party claim within 21 days of receiving proof of loss. If more time is needed, it must explain why in writing and update the claimant every 45 days. State rules vary.

Why do insurance claims take so long?

Most of the time passes between handoffs, while the file waits for an inspection, a contractor estimate, a supplement, a mortgagee endorsement or a decision. Each item depends on a different party and system, and few carriers can see in one place which item is holding each claim.

How much do claim delays cost an insurer?

On illustrative assumptions, a composite regional carrier could spend about $$64,000 a day on additional living expense, rental days, status calls and underwriting time absorbed by non-core work. The estimate excludes regulatory penalties, lost submissions and lower retention.

Notes and sources
  1. Insurance Journal, "JD Power: Customers Not Happy With Carrier Property Claims Service," March 2025, reporting the J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study, insurancejournal.com.
  2. J.D. Power, "Satisfaction with Auto Insurance Claims Strained by Higher Deductibles, More Total Losses," 2025 U.S. Auto Claims Satisfaction Study, Business Wire, October 2025, businesswire.com.
  3. National Association of Insurance Commissioners, "Unfair Property/Casualty Claims Settlement Practices Model Regulation," Model 902, content.naic.org.
  4. Michael Reilly, "AI underwriting: Beyond the hype," Accenture Insurance Blog, September 2025, citing Accenture's 2024 underwriting survey, insuranceblog.accenture.com; and Claims Journal, report on Accenture's underwriting survey of 434 US underwriters, August 2022, claimsjournal.com.