When your insurer sends someone out to inspect your damage, that person is called an adjuster. If you hire your own representative, that person is also called an adjuster. Same job title, opposite employer, and that single fact decides whose interests each one is actually sized to protect.
The three roles that actually exist
There is no fourth category, despite how confusing the terminology gets. Every adjuster involved in a property claim falls into one of these:
- Company adjuster: A direct employee of the insurance carrier, paid a salary. Works exclusively for that one insurer, handles the claim from the carrier's internal system, and has no financial stake tied to the size of your settlement specifically.
- Independent adjuster: Not an employee, but a contractor the insurer hires on a per-claim or per-event basis, most commonly after hurricanes, wildfires, or other catastrophes when the volume of claims exceeds what staff adjusters can handle. Still paid by and working for the insurer, even though the business card says "independent."
- Public adjuster: Licensed by the state specifically for this role, hired directly by the policyholder, and paid a percentage of whatever gets recovered. The only one of the three whose paycheck is not coming from the insurance company.
Who pays each one, and why it matters
Company and independent adjusters are both compensated by the carrier, whether as a salary or a contracted fee for handling a volume of files. Their employer is the insurance company, full stop, and that relationship shapes the incentives even for adjusters who are personally trying to be fair. A public adjuster's fee is a percentage of your recovery, paid by you out of the settlement, which means the adjuster only earns more by getting you more.
This is not an accusation that carrier-side adjusters act in bad faith individually; many are conscientious professionals doing a difficult job. It is simply a structural fact: nobody is paid by the person their decisions are supposed to serve, except the public adjuster.
What each one is and is not allowed to do
All three are bound by state licensing law and by the terms of the policy itself; no adjuster of any kind can pay you more than the policy actually owes, and none can waive policy exclusions that do not apply to your loss. Where they differ is scope and duty. A company or independent adjuster's job is to evaluate your claim against the policy on the insurer's behalf, deciding what is covered, what is excluded, and how much depreciation applies, then reporting that assessment back to the carrier that employs them. They are not your advocate and have no duty to find every dollar you are entitled to, only to evaluate the claim according to the policy and their employer's guidelines. A public adjuster's entire legal role is the opposite: to advocate for the policyholder, document the loss to the fullest extent the policy allows, and negotiate the settlement upward within the bounds of what is actually covered.
