Insurance inspections are required by Insurance carriers to ensure that the property that they're providing the insurance coverage for is ok to be insured.  In a nutshell, the insurance company wants to make sure that there risk when insuring the property is as minimal as possible.  If there is ever a loss with the property being insured, the insurance company is responsible to pay for the losses, so it makes sense that insurance company would want to make sure that the property is in good condition.

Loss control inspection companies, also known as insurance inspection companies, perform these inspections for Insurance companies and for general agents.  When the insurance company has a property that they're going to provide coverage for, they will contact the inspection company and provide them with the information that they need to schedule and perform the inspection.  This information includes, but is not limited to, the insured's name (person's name or business name that is listed on the policy), property location address, insured's phone number, policy number and typed of coverage.

The insurance inspection company receives the inspection request and assigns it to one of their inspectors.  The loss control inspector will contact the insured, or the contact person provided, to schedule an appointment.  The properties that are being inspected are different in each situation.  They can be residential apartment buildings, commercial property buildings, mixed use buildings - these can have a retail store on the first floor, or an office space, and have residential apartments on the floors above them.  

The inspections are performed during the day, so the contact person provided might be the tenant of the building or a superintendent of a building, as the building owner isn't always available at the time of the inspection.  At times, the inspector will contact the owner or management company to obtain information about the building prior to the inspection.  This information includes but is not limited to, the age of the building and other factual information.  The inspection company will check this information against the appearance of the building and at times, this information can be checked online.

The inspector will perform the inspection, obtaining different information, which is determined by the type of coverage of the insurance policy and the requirements of the insurance carrier.  Other situations that effect the information being provided is location.  For example, an inspection in Florida might contain information that is relevant for hurricanes and tropical storms.  Most of the time, the inspection includes pictures that get inserted into the inspection report.  The completed report is sent back to the inspection company where quality control is performed to make sure that the information being provided is as accurate as possible.

As soon as the completed inspection report is ready to go, it is sent to the insurance carrier.  The insurance company looks over the report to make sure the risk is ok to be insured, and if they feel that the recommendations provided by the inspection company are deemed necessary to be corrected, then they will request a recommendation check.  The inspection company will go out again to see if the property owner complied with these recommendations, and will return the results in the same manner in which the inspection took place.  It should be noted that there aren't always recommendations for the property.  

Insurance inspections, especially in areas that are high risk locations who suffer from losses more frequently than others due to forces outside of their control, such as Florida because of the weather conditions and proximity to the ocean, are critical parts of the insurance process.  It's very important to use a loss control inspection company that is trusted and reliable in its field.