What Is "New Money" and Why It Should Drive Every Supplement Decision

If you've researched insurance supplement companies, you've probably noticed that different companies charge in different ways. Some charge a flat fee per claim. Some charge a percentage of the total claim value. Others charge a percentage of what they call "recovered" funds.

The differences matter — significantly. And understanding them can save your roofing company thousands of dollars every year.

At Ultimate Claims, we charge based on one thing only: new money. Here's what that means, why it matters, and why we believe it's the only fair way to structure supplement fees.

What Is New Money?

New money is simple: it's the difference between what the insurance carrier originally paid on your claim and what they pay after our supplement is approved.

If we don't recover anything beyond the original estimate, you owe us nothing. Zero. That's the core of the new money model — we only get paid when we genuinely add value to your claim.

How Other Supplement Companies Charge

Not all supplement companies use the new money model. Here's how the most common structures compare:

Fee Structure	How It Works	Risk to Contractor
Flat fee per claim	Fixed charge regardless of outcome	You pay even if nothing is recovered
% of total claim	Percentage of entire claim value including what carrier already paid	You pay on money the carrier already owed you
% of "recovered" funds	Varies — definition of "recovered" differs by company	Ambiguous — read the fine print carefully
% of new money only	Fee only on the difference between original and revised estimate	Zero risk — you only pay on genuine added value

Why New Money Protects You

The new money model aligns your interests with ours completely. We make money only when you make money. There's no incentive for us to submit inflated or unsupported supplements — carriers would reject them and neither of us would get paid.

It also means you can submit every single claim without risk. There's no cost to try. If a claim turns out to have been fairly estimated by the carrier and there's nothing legitimate to add, you owe nothing. If we recover $3,000 on a small residential job, you pay 15% of $3,000 — $450 — and keep the rest.

What This Means for Your Business

For a roofing company doing 20 insurance jobs per season in Chicagoland, the math is significant. If even half of those jobs have $5,000-$10,000 in recoverable new money — which our experience shows is conservative — that's $50,000 to $100,000 in additional revenue per season that would otherwise go uncollected.

After our fee, the net new money in your pocket is still transformational. And it requires no additional work from your team — you submit the claim documentation and we handle everything else.