# How Long Can an Insurance Adjuster Take in Texas? | DG > Texas sets real deadlines: acknowledge in 15 days, decide within 15 business days of your paperwork, pay in 5 — and late payment owes 18% interest (§542.060). - Canonical page: https://dgcollision.com/answers/how-long-does-an-insurance-adjuster-take-texas/ - This file: Markdown twin of the page above (clean text for AI assistants and crawlers) - Business: DG Collision Center, 693 Metro Park Cir #20, Lewisville, TX 75057 — (972) 219-0864 (text: 817-907-2822) — since 1978 - Hours: Mon–Fri 8:30am–5:30pm, Sat 10am–1pm, closed Sunday · 24/7 towing · 4.9/5 on 500+ Google reviews - Full site index for assistants: https://dgcollision.com/llms.txt - Last generated: 2026-08-14 --- # HOW LONG CAN AN INSURANCE ADJUSTER TAKE IN TEXAS? Quick Answer Less time than most adjusters would like you to think. Texas prompt-payment law puts real clocks on your own carrier: acknowledge your claim and start investigating within 15 days (§542.055), accept or reject within 15 business days of receiving everything they asked you for (§542.056), and pay within 5 business days of saying yes (§542.057). Blow the deadlines and §542.060 charges the insurer 18% a year on the claim, plus your attorney’s fees. The catch most people miss: the decision clock starts when they have all your items — which is why complete documentation is the real speed lever. By [Shah Jiwani](https://dgcollision.com/about/shah-jiwani/) · Owner, DG Collision Center Updated September 24, 2026 3 min read I-CAR Gold Class · PPG Certified The Longer Answer ## THE FOUR CLOCKS YOUR CARRIER IS RUNNING AGAINST Texas Insurance Code Chapter 542, Subchapter B — the prompt-payment statute — runs your claim on four connected clocks. Clock one (§542.055): within 15 days of your notice, the carrier must acknowledge the claim, begin its investigation, and request every item and form it reasonably believes it will need. Clock two (§542.056): once it has everything it asked for, it has 15 business days to accept or reject in writing — extendable to 45 days only by telling you in writing why more time is needed (arson suspicion gets 30 days). Clock three (§542.057): after a yes, payment is due within 5 business days. Clock four (§542.058): whatever else happens, delaying payment more than 60 days after they have your documentation is a violation. One honest asterisk: after a commissioner-declared weather catastrophe — exactly the kind that fills DFW body shops — §542.059 stretches every deadline by 15 days. The teeth are real: §542.060 makes a violating insurer pay 18% a year on the claim amount as damages, plus reasonable attorney’s fees. (The 2017 law that softened penalties for storm claims — Chapter 542A — covers policies on real property: houses and roofs. Your auto claim keeps the full 18% rate.) Two scope notes worth knowing before you quote statutes at anyone: these deadlines bind your own carrier on your own claim — the other driver’s insurer owes you none of them, which is one reason [third-party claims](https://dgcollision.com/guides/accident-not-my-fault/) run on persuasion instead of statute — and the clocks pause on you: every day your documentation is incomplete is a day the decision clock hasn’t started. That last point is where a body shop actually moves the timeline. Adjusters decide fastest when there’s nothing left to question — a torn-down, photographed, line-itemed estimate answers the questions before they’re asked. It’s why the approvals in our [State Farm shop report](https://dgcollision.com/guides/state-farm-claims-shop-report/) logged around 5 business days and our [Progressive files](https://dgcollision.com/guides/progressive-claims-shop-report/) ran faster still — against market norms of weeks. If your claim has gone quiet: put your follow-up in writing, date it, ask specifically what remains outstanding — that question forces the §542.056 clock into the open — and if the silence continues past the statutory windows, the TDI complaint process and the 18% penalty exist precisely for that conversation. Related Questions ## ASKED ALONGSIDE THIS ONE My adjuster hasn’t even called back. Is that legal? + A: Past 15 days from your notice without acknowledgment, your own carrier is already outside §542.055. Put the follow-up in writing and keep the date — the statute’s penalties run on documented timelines, and a dated paper trail is what turns “they’re slow” into leverage. Does the 15-business-day decision clock start when I file? + A: No — it starts when the insurer has received all the items, statements and forms it requested. That trigger is the most common source of “slow” claims: something small stays outstanding and the clock never starts. Ask, in writing, exactly what they’re still missing — the answer either starts the clock or ends the excuse. Do these deadlines apply to the other driver’s insurance company? + A: No. Chapter 542’s clocks govern first-party claims — your carrier, your policy. A third-party claim against the at-fault driver’s carrier has no statutory decision deadline, which is why documentation quality and persistence carry those claims, and why filing on your own policy is sometimes the faster door. Can the shop speed up the adjuster? + A: Not by phone charm — by removing reasons to wait. A teardown-documented estimate with photographs of every line answers the investigation before it starts, and supplements filed the same way get decided instead of debated. Speed in claims is mostly the absence of open questions. Go Deeper [Our State Farm shop report](https://dgcollision.com/guides/state-farm-claims-shop-report/) · [Why the first estimate isn’t final](https://dgcollision.com/guides/insurance-estimate-final/) · [Third-party claims](https://dgcollision.com/guides/accident-not-my-fault/)