Texas insurance claim deadlines, and the 18% penalty for missing them

The distinction that decides whether any of this applies

The Prompt Payment of Claims Act governs first-party claims: a claim you make on a policy you are insured under. Your collision coverage, your PIP, your UM/UIM.

It does not govern a claim you make against the driver who hit you. That is a third-party claim, the other insurer owes you no contract, and it can take as long as it likes to respond. People wait weeks for a call back and assume somebody is breaking a rule. Usually nobody is, because the rule was never pointed at that insurer.

So if the other side has gone quiet, the lever is your own coverage, not this chapter.

The clock, step by step

Fifteen days to acknowledge. From receiving notice of your claim, the insurer must acknowledge it, begin investigating, and ask you for everything it needs. Surplus lines insurers get thirty business days.

Fifteen business days to decide. Counted from when it has received every item it requested, not from when you first called. It may extend this by up to forty five days if it tells you in writing why it needs longer.

Five business days to pay. Once it says yes, the money must follow. Where payment depends on you doing something first, the five days run from when you do it.

What a missed deadline is worth

An insurer that fails to pay on time owes the amount of the claim plus interest at eighteen percent a year, and reasonable attorney’s fees. That penalty is why these dates are worth tracking rather than trusting.

Making the clock work for you

The deadline to decide only starts once the insurer holds everything it asked for, which gives a slow adjuster an easy way to stall: request documents in dribs and drabs. Two habits close that off.

Send everything requested in one batch, and confirm in writing what you sent and when. Then ask a single question, also in writing: is anything else outstanding before you can accept or reject this claim? A written no starts the fifteen business days on a date you can prove.

Keep a dated log of every call and letter. If the deadlines are missed, that log is the evidence, and an attorney licensed in Texas can tell you whether the delay is worth pursuing under this chapter.