How Long Does It Take to Confirm Bodily Injury Coverage?

After a crash, one of the first questions is simple: does the at-fault driver actually have bodily injury (BI) coverage, and how much?

How fast you get an answer depends on the insurer, the state, and how quickly a formal claim is opened. In practice, if you hire a lawyer that works quickly, many insurers will confirm that a policy exists and provide basic liability limits within a few business days, once they've verified the policy was active on the date of loss.

If days and weeks have passed without your lawyer telling you whether there is bodily injury coverage, that is a major red flag that the claim is not being handled diligently.

The problem with delay is not just inconvenience. It directly affects your medical treatment decisions and your understanding of the case. In some situations, clients continue treating under PIP while waiting on basic coverage information, only to later be told that there is little or no BI coverage available. By that point, they may have spent weeks going to doctors, building bills, and investing time into treatment plans that were never going to be supported by meaningful insurance recovery.

I have personally heard horror stories where clients were not told about the lack of coverage until weeks after the accident, after extensive treatment had already taken place, leaving them frustrated and feeling like they were led down a path without the full information needed to make decisions.

At my law firm, I always try to inform clients of the coverage within 2–3 business days so they can decide whether they want to obtain medical treatment, continue treatment, or adjust their expectations based on the actual available coverage.