The short version: the adjuster your insurer sends works for the insurer. An independent adjuster they hire also works for the insurer. Only a public adjuster is licensed to work for you. Everyone at the table may be called an adjuster, but only one of them is paid based on how much you recover.
Three titles, one that matters
Company (staff) adjusters are insurer employees. Independent adjusters are contractors the insurer hires, often after catastrophes when claim volume explodes. Public adjusters are licensed by the state, retained by you, and paid a percentage of your recovery.
What the difference looks like in practice
The carrier-side adjuster decides scope: what gets counted, what gets depreciated, what gets excluded as maintenance. A public adjuster documents the same property against the same policy but builds the claim for maximum covered recovery and negotiates the scope line by line. Our founder spent years as a carrier-side adjuster, including catastrophe work across more than a dozen states, and can attest the files are built very differently depending on who is paying.