Just_Friends — Vol. 2 | Q3 2026

Welcome back to our quarterly stakeholder letter, Just_Friends. For friends old and new, I share a view of the world through the lens of real estate and insurance, along with important news from our company, JustClaims. One reader joked that he really enjoyed reading half of my last letter (!) so I’ll shorten this one. It’ll feel more like a pop single with a B side, and less like a full-length album. Hopefully it’s a hit. 

Justin Time: Our First Product 

Here’s a sad irony for you. One of the world’s most crucially helpful products is also one of the most difficult to use. Why? Because before you can benefit from it you must first demonstrate a deep understanding of its inner workings. 

Can you imagine a world where this was commonplace? I can’t. Life jackets float even for those who can’t explain buoyancy. And the three-point seat belt has saved the lives of more than a million non-physicists. 

But property insurance requires policyholders to understand a ton of complexity in order to use it. The last policy I purchased, for a 24-unit apartment building, was 85,858 words long! The average American would need nearly a full day to read my policy, and still might not grok it. Most states have readability standards^[1] but they’re not protective enough or consistently applied by location and policy type.^[2] 

When damage strikes a property, it puts tremendous pressure on the business or family using it. The pressure of time compounds an already difficult situation. For any peril type, getting back to normal as quickly as possible is essential. You need to run a sprint but you’re at the beginning of a marathon course designed by someone who has incentives to prevent you from finishing. 

Good news: we built technology to help! Justin (short for JustInsurance.ai) is an AI policy analyzer that will consider every part of an insurance policy, make multiple passes at the key components, and offer a clear overview. Justin leverages advanced AI models (LLMs), but incorporates additional technology and extensive fine tuning by internal and external insurance experts. This applied AI product is purpose-built to understand policy language. 

Why not just use ChatGPT or Claude to help? If only! Unfortunately, when presented with a complex insurance policy, off-the-shelf AI is lazier than you think. In test after test, we saw it skip pages and make probabilistic guesses. Leading LLMs would start the job really well, quit early, and declare victory; which is dangerous because it makes the policyholder feel more knowledgeable than they really are. This felt a bit like taking a flight that lands somewhere between your departure and destination cities…you’re quickly on your way, but never get where you want to go. 

To be perfectly honest, we built the underlying technology for ourselves because JustClaims manages property insurance claims. Our client work requires precision and deep subject matter expertise, so the technology was designed in service of that. But when we saw how powerful and useful this part of our platform was, we decided to spin it out and offer it to our ecosystem. 

We’ve decided to make Justin free for any policyholder or business to use. We think it could be very useful for property owners, investors, contractors, HOAs, and anyone else who needs to understand what a policy actually covers. Our business model lets us give technology like Justin away and, to come full circle, there is a bit of a mission component here. Volvo probably could’ve profited from the seatbelt its engineers invented, but waived its royalties in order to incentivize adoption – and safety. 

So please use Justin. We’d absolutely love your feedback. And definitely share with your networks! More Regulation, Please! 

For our quarterly look at insurance regulation, we’ll focus on a few states that are tightening their oversight of public adjusters like us. Although the patchwork nature of state-by-state regulations can be challenging, we do support smart oversight, transparency, and consumer protections. 

Pennsylvania’s proposed SB 1074^[3] is sensibly updating the Public Adjuster Licensing Law to require more disclosures, rules against conflict of interest, commission limits, etc.

South Carolin’s S. 196^[4] became law on May 19, 2026. It established a new public adjuster licensing framework and added both continuing education requirements and prudent fee limitations. 

Virginia’s HB 437^[5] became law on April 6, 2026. It tightened the laws around unauthorized practice of claims adjusting via power of attorney. Equally important, disclosure and conflict of interest rules are being tightened, and policyholder rights are now both stronger and clearer. 

All three of these bills are doing the same thing: raising the bar! We are big fans of this trend. Our goal at JustClaims is to professionalize claims advocacy. High standards of professional acumen and conduct suit us just fine, and serve to elevate our industry. Insurance is hard enough to navigate without opportunistic, uncommitted amateurs confusing policyholders. 

Finally…

…Good luck, and stay safe out there! 

That’s all for this quarter. Please follow our Blog, LinkedIn, and Careers page for updates. 

Chris Himes

[1] The Flesch Reading Ease score is typically used, but it’s inconsistently applied. And even at the standard level mandated by most states, we’re talking about fairly complicated prose.

[2] https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/model-law-chart-mc-25-readability-requirements.pdf 

[3] https://www.palegis.us/legislation/bills/2025/sb1074

[4] https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess126_2025-2026/bills/196.htm 

[5] https://legiscan.com/VA/bill/HB437/2026