Precision and Clarity in Complex Claims Measurement

Drake Loss Consulting provides specialized forensic accounting and appraisal services for complex property losses. By combining CPA-level financial modeling with an intimate understanding of property insurance policy, we provide the empirical data required to resolve high-stakes claims.

Business Interruption Consulting

The Problem: Business Interruption (BI) claims are often the most contentious aspect of a property loss. Insurance carriers frequently utilize rigid formulas or flat averages that fail to account for a business's growth trajectory, seasonality, or unique market conditions. If the "Actual Loss Sustained" is not accurately modeled, the indemnity period will not reflect the true financial impact of the event.

Our Approach: We assist public adjusters and policyholders through forensic reconstruction. We do not rely on simple historical averages. We construct a comprehensive "But-For" economic model to project exactly what the business would have achieved had the loss not occurred.

  • We analyze 24-36 months of pre-loss financial data to establish accurate growth trends, adjust for non-recurring events, and identify seasonal spikes.

  • We meticulously categorize continuing versus saved (non-continuing) expenses to ensure an accurate Net Income calculation.

  • We segregate standard operating expenses from mitigative "survival spend," mathematically proving to the carrier how expedited costs successfully reduced the overall business income loss.

The Deliverable: A defensible, professional report detailing all schedules, projection methodologies, and supporting source documents, ready for carrier review and audit.

Business Interruption Appraisals

The Problem: When the policyholder and the carrier are deadlocked on the financial measurement of a loss, litigation is an expensive and protracted option. The policy's Appraisal Clause offers a binding alternative, but it requires a specialized financial expert who intimately understands the nuances of forensic accounting and BI methodology.

Our Approach: We serve as the named Appraiser for the "Time Element" (financial) portion of the loss. Operating as a competent and impartial expert, we apply strict data reconciliation to evaluate the competing financial models.

The Deliverable: A methodical, data-backed presentation of the financial variance, facilitating a fair, binding, and empirically supported resolution to the dispute.

Total Loss Contents Appraisals

The Problem: High-volume commercial and residential contents claims often fail at the data level. Manually reviewing thousands of line items across unorganized PDFs leads to critical oversights, aggressive carrier depreciation, and mismatched Like Kind & Quality (LKQ) pricing.

Our Approach: We bring order to complex, unstructured inventories. Serving as the named Appraiser, we ingest carrier estimates (such as Xactimate exports), policyholder inventory lists, and photographic evidence, converting them into structured, relational databases. This allows us to systematically audit omitted items, correct categorization errors, and normalize depreciation schedules across thousands of items simultaneously.

The Deliverable: A fully auditable, formula-backed matrix that accurately reconciles the competing inventories, highlighting exact valuation gaps and forming the empirical basis for the final appraisal award.