"No, that is not at all true. A liability insurer has no duty to respond to a claim directly from a stranger. The liability insurer insures you, and owes its duties to you.
Yes, insurance is highly regulated, and after over 30 years practicing law, much of which involved dealing with the regulation of insurance, I am very familiar with that fact."
I honestly dont believe you are an attorney because then you would know that every state has a fair claims settlement act on their books. Each settlement act is worded in a similar manner. Here is a good example, California:
http://www.insurance.ca.gov/0100-con...ement-regs.cfm
Each settlement act prescribes exactly how an insurance company conducts themselves through the claims process and if there is any deviation then they get fined. The insurance company has a duty to respond to you if you report a claim and investigate the matter. They have a duty to accept or deny your claim.
I will bet money that I could call any claims hotline right now and report a claim even without a policy number and just vague facts. They will accept the claim and investigate it. How do I know this? I have worked at the insurance company claim departments. There was once this lady who kept calling in a bogus claim...to the tune of about 50 times where the internal investigation unit had to be called in and get the police involved because it was taxing the company's resources. Each time the lady called in a claim, it had to be assigned to an adjuster. There were numerous adjusters involved over several states.
In California, where I worked as an adjuster a while back, they would test you on this act and you had to sign a paper certifying that you read it. I can tell you there were plenty of claims that came through with very little information. Sometimes all we had was a license plate number...sometimes there was absolutely nothing at all where the guy simply jumped out and said he had the insurance, but left without giving any information. Each claim went the same way with the usual letters and investigative process. Everyone was responded to and when the claimants felt they were not getting responded to, then they filed a complaint with the DOI. You have to respond to these DOI complaints otherwise the company gets hit with a fine.