Individuals and businesses purchase insurance policies to protect against monetary losses. In the event of a loss, policyholders submit claims, or requests for payment, seeking compensation for their loss. Adjusters, appraisers, examiners, and investigators work primarily for property and casualty insurance companies, for whom they handle a wide variety of claims alleging property damage, liability, or bodily injury. Their main role is to investigate the claims, negotiate settlements, and authorize payments to claimants, all the while mindful not to violate the claimant’s rights under Federal and State privacy laws. They must determine whether the customer’s insurance policy covers the loss and how much of the loss should be paid to the claimant. Although many adjusters, appraisers, examiners, and investigators have overlapping functions and may even perform the same job, the insurance industry generally assigns specific roles to each of these claims workers.

In the UK, General insurance is broadly divided into three areas; personal lines, commercial lines and London market.

The London market insures with large commercial risks, for example insuring supermarkets, football players and other very specific risks.

Commercial lines products are usually designed for relatively small legal entities. These would include workers comp (employers liability), public liability, product liability, commercial fleet and other general insurance products sold in a relatively standard fashion to many organisations.

Personal lines products are designed to be sold in large quantities. This would include autos (private car), homeowners (household), pet insurance, creditor insurance and others.