Investigation and scope
Recorded Statement Questions & Outline for Adjusters
Last updated 2026-08-03
Search for recorded statement questions and most of what ranks is written for the other side of the table: what the adjuster will ask you, how to answer, what not to say. That material is well made and it is aimed at claimants. The adjuster-facing equivalent barely exists in public, which means most people learn this instrument by inheriting somebody's question list and never being told why the questions sit in that order.
The order is the whole technique. Consent and identification first, because a statement taken without a clean on-record consent block is worth less than no statement at all. Then the open narrative, uninterrupted, before you ask a single itemizing question — an account given in the insured's own sequence is evidence; an account assembled out of your checklist is your sequence with their words in it. Only after the narrative do you itemize, then reach for contemporaneous records, then close with a catch-all that gives the speaker the chance to correct or add anything.
The worked example below is a fictional water loss and includes a transcript fragment rather than a summary, because the thing an outline cannot teach is how a follow-up question actually lands. It also leaves a question open: the insured genuinely does not know how long the line was leaking, the statement records that he does not know, and nobody helps him guess.
Jurisdiction
Written primarily against US first-party property practice. Claim handling is regulated state by state — acknowledgment and response deadlines, prompt-payment requirements, adjuster licensing and unfair claims practices standards all differ — and the policy actually issued governs the claim. Where a page cites a statute, model act or regulation, confirm what applies in the state where the loss occurred. Outside the US, treat the structure as transferable and the legal references as not.
Recorded Statement Questions template
Free Word download, no email required. Or open it in Professional Drafter — it lands in your template library, ready to draft against.
When to use this document
- When the account of how the loss happened is the main thing the file needs and a written statement will not carry the detail — sequence, timing, who was present, what was moved before you arrived.
- When the reported facts and the physical observations do not sit together comfortably, and the file needs the insured's own words on the record before positions harden.
- When you are documenting contents or a claimed value that no receipt supports, so that the description, age and condition come from the owner rather than from your reconstruction.
- Not as a substitute for an examination under oath. The statutory standard fire policy enacted in New York and California names the examination under oath expressly among the requirements in case loss occurs, as a distinct obligation alongside producing records and furnishing an inventory. A recorded statement is an investigative interview conducted by the adjuster, not that.
Worked example
Fictional scenario: recorded statement of the insured on a water loss at a single-family dwelling, taken by telephone eight days after discovery. The account is consistent and the cause is not in dispute. What the statement does not resolve is how long the supply line had been leaking, and the adjuster deliberately does not help the insured produce a number.
Preliminaries and consent
Today is 22 July 2026 and the time is 10:04 Central. My name is R. Calloway, field adjuster for the carrier, taking a recorded statement on claim PC-2026-11482. This statement is being taken by telephone. Present on the line are myself and the insured. No one else is present at either end.
Q. Mr Okonjo, do I have your permission to record this conversation?
A. Yes, that's fine.
Q. Would you state your full name and date of birth for the record?
A. Daniel Okonjo, [DOB given].
Q. And the address of the property we are discussing?
A. 118 Harbour Lane.
Q. Are you giving this statement voluntarily, and do you understand you can stop at any time?
A. Yes, I understand.
Policy, property and household background
The insured owns the property and has done so for nine years. It is a single-storey single-family dwelling on a slab, with a detached garage. He lives there with his wife; both children are adults and live elsewhere. Both spouses are named on the deed; the policy is in his name alone. There is a mortgage with a lender he named and whose account number he did not have to hand. He confirmed there is no other insurance on the dwelling or its contents.
Q. Was anyone staying at the house other than the two of you in July?
A. No. My wife was with her sister in Ohio from the tenth. I left on the eleventh.
The open narrative
Q. Tell me in your own words what happened.
A. I came back on the morning of the fourteenth, early, about a quarter past seven. I came in by the side door, the one nearest the garage, and I could hear it before I saw anything — a hissing, like a tap left on. The hallway carpet, the runner, was black with water. There was water standing in the low part of the hall, maybe by the closet, an inch or so I would say. I went to the utility closet and the line to the water heater had come off at the top, the braided one, and it was running. I shut the valve behind the heater. Then I called my wife and then I called you people. That's it, really.
Q. Is there anything else?
A. I moved the boxes out of the closet onto the kitchen table because they were sitting in it. Books mostly, fourteen of them.
Q. Is there anything else you remember about that morning?
A. It was warm in the house. The air conditioning was set back while we were away, so it was close, humid. That's all I can think of.
Itemization — the loss walked through
Last known normal condition: the insured states he left the house at approximately 18:00 on 11 July, that he walked through the hallway on his way out, and that the floor was dry and he heard nothing. He is confident about the time because he had a 19:30 flight and left for the airport with the usual margin.
Discovery: 07:15 on 14 July, by the insured, alone. First sign was sound, then the wet runner.
Actions in order: shut the isolating valve behind the heater at approximately 07:20; telephoned his wife; reported the claim at approximately 07:40; moved fourteen cartons of books from the closet floor to the kitchen table; opened the windows.
Q. Did anyone attend before I did on the eighteenth?
A. A restoration company came out that same afternoon, the fourteenth. I was there, I let them in. They put fans in and picked them up on the morning of the eighteenth, before you arrived.
Q. Was anything cut out, thrown away or replaced before I got there?
A. No. Nothing was cut. They just dried it.
Q. Do you have any sense of how long the water had been running?
A. Not really. It must have been a while, from the amount of it.
Q. I understand. But do you have any way of knowing — anything that would tell you when it started?
A. No. Nobody was there. I couldn't tell you.
Q. That's a fair answer and I'd rather have that than a guess. We will leave it as not known.
Contemporaneous records and third parties
The insured took eleven photographs on his phone on the morning of discovery, before the restoration company attended, and agreed to send them the same day. The restoration company's paperwork was left with him and he agreed to forward it.
Q. Who last worked on the water heater?
A. Feldstrom Plumbing. They put the whole heater in last August, I think it was the third.
Q. Do you have the invoice?
A. Somewhere. I found it when the claim started, I can look again — number twenty-nine forty-one or twenty thousand nine forty-one, something like that.
Q. If you can send the whole page rather than a photograph of the top of it, that would help. The copy I have is cut off at the line items.
A. I'll do that tonight.
Q. Is there a water meter you can read, or does the city do it?
A. The city, and it's quarterly. The bill isn't due until September.
Q. Any leak detector, alarm, cameras, anything with a log?
A. No, nothing like that.
Agreed on the record: the insured will send the eleven photographs and the full Feldstrom invoice by 25 July. The contents inventory the insured completed at the inspection on 18 July is still without his pricing; the adjuster re-sent the pricing columns the same day, to the same 25 July date.
Prior losses and condition
Q. Have you made any insurance claims on this property or any other property?
A. There was a hail claim on the roof, that was 2019 I think, maybe 2020. Different company.
Q. Any previous water damage in the hallway or the closet, whether or not you claimed it?
A. No, never.
Q. Before this, were you aware of any problem with the heater or the line to it?
A. No. It was almost new.
Q. Anything you had been meaning to have looked at?
A. No.
Closing catch-all and re-affirmation
Q. Is everything you have told me today true and correct to the best of your knowledge and belief?
A. Yes.
Q. Is there anything you would like to add or correct?
A. Only that the boxes on the table — some of those books were my father's. I don't know what you do with something like that.
Q. Noted, and I'll flag it on the inventory so it isn't priced as ordinary stock. Anything else?
A. No.
Q. Do you confirm this statement was given voluntarily and recorded with your permission?
A. I do.
The time is 10:41 and this concludes the statement.
Section-by-section guide
What each section is for, what a good one contains, and where they typically go wrong.
1.Preliminaries and consent
Everything here goes on the recording, not in your notes. Date and time, your name and role, the carrier, the claim number, who is present in the room or on the line, and the speaker's express consent to being recorded — asked as a question and answered aloud. Recording-consent law is a state matter and some states require every party to consent, so the safe practice everywhere is to obtain it on the record from each participant. Close the block by confirming the speaker's identity, that they are giving the statement voluntarily, and that they are free to stop at any point. Adjuster licensing itself varies by state — resident and non-resident requirements differ, and the NAIC's own state-by-state licensing chart runs to dozens of pages — so where you are handling a loss on a non-resident licence, name yourself and the licensed entity accurately rather than describing your role loosely.
2.Policy, property and household background
Short, factual, and taken before the narrative so the narrative is not interrupted by it. Who owns the property, who lives there, how long, what the building is, whether anyone else has an interest in it, whether there is a mortgagee or other insurance. You are not testing coverage here and you should not say anything that sounds like a coverage view. You are establishing the frame a stranger reading the transcript needs in order to follow the account that comes next.
3.The open narrative
One question, then stop talking. "Tell me in your own words what happened." Let it run to its natural end without interruption, including the parts that seem irrelevant, and resist the urge to correct sequence or supply a word. Silence is a legitimate technique here and interrupting is the single most common way an otherwise good statement is spoiled: the moment you start steering, the account becomes a co-production and its evidential weight drops. When the speaker stops, ask what else, then ask what else again. Only then move on.
4.Itemization — the loss walked through
Now go back through the narrative and take it apart chronologically. When was the property last as normal, who was the last person there, what did they see, what was the first sign something was wrong, who discovered it, at what time, what did they do first, who was called, in what order. Ask for times rather than durations wherever you can, because people estimate durations badly and report clock times reasonably well. Where the speaker does not know something, record that they do not know it and move on. Do not offer a range for them to agree with; an estimate you supplied and they accepted reads on the transcript as their evidence and it is not.
5.Contemporaneous records and third parties
Every answer above has a document behind it somewhere, and the statement is where you find out which ones exist while the speaker is thinking about it. Invoices for recent work, the mitigation vendor's paperwork, utility bills, alarm or smart-device logs, photographs taken before you arrived, text messages to a contractor, delivery records for contents. Ask what exists, who holds it, and get an agreement on the record about who will send what and by when. This section is also where subrogation is usually born: recent work by a named contractor, a product still under warranty, a neighbour's tree. Two of the claims standards market conduct examiners work from are timely investigation and adequate file documentation, and an agreement captured on the recording — this document, from this person, by this date — is the cheapest available evidence of both.
6.Prior losses and condition
Ask it plainly and without a preamble that signals suspicion, because a leading, apologetic version of this question produces a guarded answer. Previous claims at this property or another, previous damage in the same area whether or not it was claimed, known defects, work that was planned but not done. Record the answers as given. Do not comment on what any of it might mean for the claim — that assessment belongs in the file, not in the room, and a stray remark here becomes the sentence the transcript is remembered for.
7.Closing catch-all and re-affirmation
Three questions and then stop. Is everything you have told me true and correct to the best of your knowledge; is there anything you want to correct or add; do you confirm you have given this statement voluntarily and that it has been recorded with your permission. The middle one is not a formality — it is where speakers routinely add the detail they were not asked about, and a transcript that shows they were invited to add anything is materially harder to characterize later as a partial account. State the finish time on the record.
Common mistakes
The failure modes that show up most often when this document is reviewed later.
Interrupting the open narrative to ask a clarifying question.
The uninterrupted account is the only part of the statement that is entirely the speaker's own sequence. Once you steer it, everything after is a co-production, and the transcript reads that way to anyone reviewing it later. Write the clarifier down and ask it in the itemization block, where it belongs.
Offering a duration or a range for the speaker to agree with.
"So it could have been two or three days?" — "I suppose so." That is now your estimate wearing the insured's voice, and if a policy provision turns on the interval it is the worst possible evidence of it. Record "does not know" and record what would have established it. The [captioned report](/adjuster-reports/captioned-report/) on this same matter does exactly that with the leak duration.
Taking consent off the record, or from only one of two people on the line.
Recording-consent rules are state law and several states require all parties to consent. A statement whose consent block lives in your file notes rather than on the recording is the one that gets challenged, and the challenge is unanswerable because the proof is exactly the thing that is missing.
Commenting on coverage, cause or value during the statement.
Any remark about what the account means for the claim ends up quoted in isolation and read as a position the carrier took in the field. The statement is for gathering the account. The assessment goes in the file after it, where it can be written carefully.
Ending without the catch-all.
The invitation to add or correct is where speakers volunteer the detail nobody thought to ask about, and it is what makes the transcript hard to characterize afterwards as a partial account. Skipping it saves thirty seconds and removes the one question that protects the whole document.
Leaving the records ask vague — "send me anything you've got".
Nothing arrives. Name the document, name who holds it, agree a date on the record, and diarise it. An agreement captured on the recording is also a clean answer to a later suggestion that information was never requested.
Questions
- Is a recorded statement the same as an examination under oath?
- No, and conflating them causes real problems. The examination under oath is a policy condition: the statutory standard fire policy in New York and California lists it among the requirements in case loss occurs, as an obligation distinct from producing records or furnishing an inventory. It is taken under oath and is normally arranged formally. A recorded statement is an investigative interview conducted by the adjuster and is not a substitute for it. What a refusal to submit to an examination does to a claim is a question of the policy wording and of the case law in the particular state, and it is not something to work out in the field.
- Do I need the insured's permission to record?
- Ask for it on the record every time, from every party on the line. Recording-consent law is a state matter and some states require all parties to consent rather than one; the rules also differ between telephone and in-person recording in some places. Rather than tracking which rule applies to which call, obtain express consent aloud from everyone participating. It costs fifteen seconds and it removes the question.
- How long should a recorded statement be?
- As long as the account needs. A straightforward first-party property loss with a cooperative insured is often twenty-five to forty minutes. Length is a poor measure of quality — a statement that runs an hour because the adjuster asked the same question five different ways is worse than one that runs twenty minutes and captures a complete narrative, a clean itemization and an agreed list of documents.
- What do I do when the insured says they do not know?
- Write it down as not known, ask once whether anything exists that would establish it, and move on. "Does not know" with the avenues documented is a defensible file entry. A number the speaker was talked into is not, and the moment a reviewer sees where it came from in the transcript, the rest of the statement is read more sceptically too.
The blank template
Exactly what is in the Word download, so you can see the structure before deciding whether you want it.
Preliminaries and consent
- Consent asked as a question, answered aloud, by every party on the line
- Speaker's full name, date of birth, address, relationship to the policy
- Confirmation the statement is voluntary and can be stopped
- Any interpreter or representative identified by name and role
Policy, property and household background
The open narrative
Itemization — the loss walked through
- Last known normal condition — date, time, who was present
- Discovery — who, when by the clock, what they saw first
- Immediate actions, in order, with times
- Emergency services or mitigation vendors called, and by whom
- Anything moved, disposed of or repaired before inspection
- Damage as the speaker describes it, room by room, before you show them yours
Contemporaneous records and third parties
- Photographs or video taken before inspection
- Recent repair, installation or maintenance work — contractor name, date, invoice
- Vendor and mitigation paperwork
- Metering, alarm, camera or smart-home logs, and who can retrieve them
- Receipts, warranties or ownership records for claimed contents
- An explicit agreement on the record: who sends what, by when
Prior losses and condition
Closing catch-all and re-affirmation
Download this template
Free Word download, no email required. Or open it in Professional Drafter — it lands in your template library, ready to draft against.
Sources
- NAIC — Market Conduct Record Retention and Production Model Regulation (Model 910, January 2004)
- NAIC — Market Regulation Handbook: Examination Standards Summary, 2025 Edition
- NAIC — Chart PL-40: Adjuster Licensing Requirements (Fall 2024)
- N.Y. Insurance Law §3404 — standard fire policy (statutory text)
- Cal. Insurance Code §2071 — standard form fire policy
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This page is a documentation aid, not legal advice and not a coverage opinion. Claim-handling requirements vary by state and by policy wording, and a template cannot tell you what your file requires. The worked example describes a fictional loss.