Claim filing window

Definition

The minimum time a customer has to file a damage claim, which no contract may shorten.

Why It Matters

The claims ratio term concedes that claims lag the job by weeks, and the federal floor makes it months. A carrier may not provide for less than nine months to file a claim or less than two years to bring an action, by rule, by contract or otherwise. The suit clock is the part that surprises people: it runs from the date the carrier gives written notice that it has disallowed part of the claim. A seller who never sent formal disallowance letters has left that clock unstarted across the whole back catalog. So the trailing twelve months of claims a deal is priced on is structurally incomplete at closing, and incomplete in the buyer's direction. Ask for the open-claim register and the disallowance letters by date, and size any holdback on nine months.