Insurance Claim Taking Too Long? Your Rights in Colorado

“Still under review” is the most expensive sentence in insurance. It costs the insurer nothing to say and costs you a month every time you hear it. The contractor wants a deposit. The rental lease renews. And the file sits. Colorado law has a word for a file that sits without a reason, and the word is not “pending.”

How long can an insurer take to pay a claim in Colorado?

There’s no single statutory number for every policy, but there is a benchmark. Colorado’s insurance regulator requires property and casualty insurers to decide a claim, or pay it, within sixty days after the claim is “valid and complete”, which the regulation defines narrowly: your documents are in, the insurer’s reasonable investigation is done, and coverage is established. Past that point, with no reasonable dispute, the Division of Insurance can order interest on the benefit and fine the carrier by the day. That rule doesn’t give you a lawsuit by itself. What it gives you is the standard a reasonable insurer is held to — and in a bad-faith case, that standard is evidence.

Watch the phrase “valid and complete.” Insurers know the clock starts when the claim is complete, so one stalling move is to keep it incomplete: a new form, a re-inspection, a request for records they already have. In our Glenwood Springs practice, the file that is “missing one document” for four months is the one we see most.

What counts as an unreasonable delay?

Colorado’s unfair-claims law lists the moves regulators treat as unfair claim practices, and several of them are delay by another name: failing to act promptly on claim communications, failing to keep reasonable standards for prompt investigation, and failing to affirm or deny coverage within a reasonable time after proof of loss. Each one is a pattern, not a single late email. An adjuster who takes three weeks to return a call once is slow. An adjuster who takes three weeks every time, reassigns the file twice, and reopens the investigation after the contractor’s estimate came in is building a record — and it isn’t a good one for the insurer.

The test under Colorado’s bad-faith statute is whether the insurer had a reasonable basis for the delay. Waiting on a fire marshal’s report can be a reasonable basis. Waiting because the file sat in a queue is not.

Can I sue my insurance company for delaying my claim?

Yes. Colorado’s bad-faith statute reaches delay the same way it reaches denial: an insurer may not unreasonably delay or deny payment of a claim for benefits it owes. When a court finds the delay unreasonable, the remedy is two times the covered benefit plus attorney fees and costs, on top of the benefit itself. And here’s the part insurers would rather you not know: paying late doesn’t automatically erase the violation. The statute covers unreasonable delay, so a payment that arrived eighteen months late can still support a claim, measured by the benefit that was held up. The full picture is on our insurance bad faith page.

What to do if your insurer keeps stalling

First, put everything in writing and ask for everything in writing: what’s missing, who’s reviewing, when a decision is coming. A phone call is a memory; an email is an exhibit. Second, send what they ask for once, promptly, with proof you sent it. Third, keep a dated log of every contact; the timeline is the whole case in a delay claim, and nobody builds it for you. Fourth, if sixty days have passed since you sent everything asked for, with no decision and no real dispute, file a complaint with the Colorado Division of Insurance. It won’t rule on your claim, but a regulator’s inquiry moves files that policyholders can’t. Fifth, keep your own obligations: notice, proof of loss, cooperation, an examination under oath if the policy requires one. The insurer’s delay doesn’t excuse yours.

When a delay becomes insurance bad faith

A late payment is a breach of contract. A late payment without a reasonable basis is bad faith, and the difference is the difference between recovering what you were owed and recovering it plus two times the delayed benefit, with attorney fees and costs. Denial, delay, and underpayment are the same statute from three angles: a denied claim says no, an underpaid claim says less, and a delayed claim says nothing at all. The last one is the hardest to prove alone, because the evidence lives in the insurer’s claim file, and that file doesn’t come out until litigation. Your timeline does the rest.

The deadlines run while the file sits. The contract claim generally gives you three years to sue; bad-faith claims generally run two. When a delay started the clock is an argument, and a quiet stall that runs out your deadline is a tactic insurers understand. If your claim has been “under review” for more than a few months, don’t wait on the next status update.

Bring the claim file as you have it: every letter, every email, your log of calls. We’ll tell you whether the delay is a reasonable dispute or a stall, and what it’s worth if it’s the second. Nelson Waneka reads these files himself. Request a Consult or call (970) 200-2222. No fee unless we recover.