[Trainspotter]

Allstate has a practice of coming in at the lowest bid and then regularly increasing your premiums every year after they have you hooked. We switched to Liberty Mutual because after 18 years of claim free coverage with Allstate, they still increased our premiums every year. I suspect most insurers operate the same way so shopping around every few years if you can do it might be the best practice.

[imneedy]

have you guys tried onebeacon

We have our insurance through them for both home and auto and no issues so far.

[JViello]

Originally Posted by nish2006

I guess that makes no difference to the acccountants who calculate forward premiums.

Exactly. But really though, 4-5 mile is still very coastal if a hurricane come up this way...which we are due for. 40-50 miles can make a difference for wind for sure. I obviously don't know your exactly location but I did see a "flood" map that outlined how far a storm surge of 10 feet would go inland and it was pretty shocking to see some areas miles inland affected.

Edit: This may explain a lot. FEMA recently has redrawn and updated their flood maps for 2010, which is directly affecting FFC, NHC and NLC properties.

Here is a link to a realtor site talking about it.

http://www.gwrealtorboard.com/Portal...S%20BINDER.pdf

[willow wind]

We used to have State Farm. And we're within the 2 miles from Long Island Sound category. The year after Hurricane Katrina, our rates more than doubled. Had to do some scrambling to find an insurer who was within reason and who would even insure that close to the water. Finally went with The Hartford, who had the best rates for coastal homes. Their rate has remained steady.

[Cambium]

Just thinking out loud...

if a company had:

5000 Customers @ average of $125 per month = $625,000 A MONTH... 7.5 MILLION A YEAR..

I never understand why they raise premiums after looking at their numbers...If they didn't have claims totalling half their revenue why scam home owners into thinking rates have to go up to cover costs!?

[toddb]

Originally Posted by Trainspotter

Allstate has a practice of coming in at the lowest bid and then regularly increasing your premiums every year after they have you hooked. We switched to Liberty Mutual because after 18 years of claim free coverage with Allstate, they still increased our premiums every year. I suspect most insurers operate the same way so shopping around every few years if you can do it might be the best practice.

I've had our provider (Nationwide) go up 10% each year for the past several years... started shopping around and found the same initial low price, with no cap or max increase year over year. I spoke to my Nationwide agent (a guy in town I've met a few times over the 4 years I've been with them), and he said that all of the insurance companies (including his) are basically following the drug-dealer mentality. Hook em early with cheap prices, then jack up the prices once they are committed. Nobody wants to shop around every year for insurance, and it actually gets more expensive when you hop around a lot. It also doesn't help that a bunch of insurance co's won't even write new homeowners policies in CT. I ended up talking to him about a few options to cut costs (automatic debit of the premium, electronic statements, etc.) which can save you a few bucks per month each. I know it's not a huge amount, but every bit can help.

1 thing to note is that if you currently have homeowners and auto under the same provider, and then only switch 1 of them, your other coverage could go up 20% or more because of the bundling discounts they offer.

[phil_s]

Originally Posted by Cambium

Just thinking out loud...

if a company had:

5000 Customers @ average of $125 per month = $625,000 A MONTH... 7.5 MILLION A YEAR..

I never understand why they raise premiums after looking at their numbers...If they didn't have claims totalling half their revenue why scam home owners into thinking rates have to go up to cover costs!?

Many insurance companies are public, so you can go on their website to look at quarterly earnings reports and see their "combined ratios" for home and auto. A combined ratio is the total they pay out in claims + operating costs relative to the total they collect in premiums. For auto insurance, you'll see that it is well over 90% for most companies, and for home it is probably in the 65% range countrywide without catastrophes but varies from region to region. You need to keep in mind that in many parts of the country (any region that has significant weather-related or natural disaster related losses), they reserve a significant amount of your premium for a rainy day fund to cover losses that might only happen every 10, 15, or 20 years (massive blizzards, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornado, wildfires, etc.)-- if they didn't do this, they would go bankrupt in the event of a major event.

Point being, they are not making huge profits on a percentage basis-- their margins are actually pretty small overall. The problem is identifying where to increase their rates when they are not high enough to cover what they pay in claims, because they are collecting premiums well in advance of when they ultimately pay out claims. Some companies are much better than others in being able to do this fairly.