These come straight out of the rule. Days mean calendar days, and if a deadline lands on a weekend or holiday it rolls to the next business day.

• 15 days to acknowledge your claim. Once you notify your carrier of a loss, it has fifteen days to acknowledge receipt. It can satisfy that by paying you, or by sending you the claim forms and complete instructions. Notice given to your agent counts as notice to the insurer — a detail that matters when you called the local office and nobody at corporate seems to know.
• 15 days to answer your communications. If you send something that reasonably calls for a reply, the carrier has fifteen days to respond. This is the deadline most homeowners never invoke, and it is the one that ends most of the silence.
• 21 days to accept or deny. After receiving a properly executed proof of loss, the insurer has twenty-one days to decide. If it needs more time, it must tell you inside that same twenty-one days and explain why. After that it owes you a written status update at least every forty-five days for as long as the investigation runs.
• 10 days to pay. Once a claim is accepted and the amount is determined and not in dispute, payment is due within ten days. Structured settlements, probate, and documented extraordinary circumstances are the narrow exceptions.

One more that catches people out

If a carrier receives an inquiry from the Ohio Department of Insurance about your claim, it has twenty-one days to give the Department a reasonable response. That is why a Department complaint often produces a phone call within a week when six of your own emails did not.

None of this is legal advice, and the rule itself says it does not create a private right to sue. What it does create is a regulatory standard the Department can enforce — and a vocabulary that makes you sound like someone who has read the file.