October 30, 2019 Tips for shopping for home insurance in a challenging market It is not uncommon for people to break down in tears after getting a notice that their home insurer is dropping them as a customer. In some cases, it’s tears of frustration that they paid all that money for insurance they never used, or tears…
September 19, 2019 Deadlines and Decisions: Two-Year Anniversary Bulletin for 2017 North Bay Fire impacted households Home insurance policies typically limit the amount of time you have to collect all available replacement cost and loss of use/ALE benefits and to file a lawsuit. Your insurance company is legally required to provide you with written notice 60 days before any deadline or benefit expiration they want…
August 28, 2019 THE PROTECTION GAP: Monitoring and addressing the extent to which US homes are under/uninsured: A national imperative In early August, 2019 at a national meeting of insurance regulators and stakeholders from across the country, United Policyholders helped set the stage for the important conversation that needs to be happening about the increasingly large gap between disaster recovery costs and the amount of…
August 28, 2019 UP offers solutions to California’s home insurance crisis The problem: Generally speaking, insurance companies want to sell insurance. But they also want to be profitable. Sometimes they will stop selling insurance in a region or to a group of customers they deem too risky. They do this as a business strategy to improve profitability. …
July 17, 2019 Bach Talk: Your Money or Your Life (Insurance) As with all types of insurance, you have choices to make when shopping for life insurance. If you’re in the market for life insurance, rates are the lowest they’ve been in 20 years. That is probably because fewer and fewer employers offer it as an employee…
June 5, 2019 A powerful disaster recovery model: Insurance Support Groups Helping wildfire survivors form support groups by insurance company has been part of the United Policyholders’ menu of services since our beginning. We’ve seen time and again how communicating with others who are navigating similar policy language, company rules, and adjuster personalities helps people overcome…
May 20, 2019 Full and fair insurance payouts foster safe and sound construction As anyone who has been involved in a major construction project will tell you, construction supervision is critical. Contractor overhead and profit is what pays for that supervision, and it is a necessary expense of any project that involves multiple trades that have to be…
April 4, 2019 Nip coverage gutting in the bud, UP tells CA Gov’s Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Recovery Insurance remains a critically important source of disaster recovery financing for individuals, businesses, and government, but insurers must do a better job at insuring homes to value and paying benefits in a timely manner, UP Co-Founder and Executive Director Amy Bach told a high-level California…
March 25, 2019 Bach Talk – Government supported property insurance programs are here to stay If a home or business owner in the United States can’t find property insurance in the private market, they can buy it through a variety of hybrid public/private arrangements, often referred to as “pools” or “Residual Market Mechanisms” (insurance lingo for programs that cover risks…
February 12, 2019 Regulating financial practices is critical to a healthy economy Some leaders in the financial services community work hard to weaken consumer protection regulations and the agencies that enforce them. But it clear from recent history (2008) that the American economy works much better when financial consumer protections are in place and being enforced. UP…
January 22, 2019 Keeping home insurance available and affordable in our era of climate change and tech tools Generally speaking, home insurance companies are free to pick which homes they want to insure and which they don’t. There has been an explosion in tech tools that insurance companies can use to assess risks and decide who and what they are willing to insure…
December 18, 2018 BACH TALK: Crumbling foundation owners in CT await insurance rulings So many home foundations are crumbling in the state of Connecticut that the legislature passed a special law sealing their records, in part to protect their ongoing efforts to secure insurance coverage to help cover repairs and prevent collapse, damage and injuries. The widespread problem…
December 3, 2018 Hurry up and wait? What to do when your insurer goes “insolvent.” Disasters strain insurer’s claim-paying capacity in situations where they have alot of customers in the impacted region that all make claims at the same time. The vast majority of insurers have enough money on hand to pay their claims after disasters, thanks to regulations that…
November 8, 2018 In praise of a policyholder hero – Cal Thur Chip Merlin, a policyholder hero himself, alerted me that we’ve recently lost a champion – Cal Thur. I was introduced to Cal by the late, great Eugene Anderson many moons ago, and he was an important United Policyholders volunteer and supporter. Cal was a highly…
November 5, 2018 What’s behind your insurer’s brand curtain? Brand names matter to consumers, and that includes insurance company brands. Consumers seek out company names they recognize and associate with reliability, especially when insuring a home, which for most people is their biggest asset. As a brand name, Lloyd’s of London is generally very…
October 26, 2018 UP on panel at joint Senate/Assembly Hearing on Post-Wildfire Insurance Issues On Tuesday, October 30th, 2018 UP Executive Director Amy Bach will be on the speaker panel at a joint public hearing at Napa Valley College convened by the California Senate and Insurance Committees to examine root causes and potential solutions for solving the post-wildfire underinsurance…
October 16, 2018 Climate change and tech innovation: An imperative for the insurance industry to adapt responsibly There is no shortage of opinions and predictions about how climate change and the tech explosion will reshape the insurance landscape as we know it. Here are just a few of the predictions we’re hearing: “Insurance deserts will proliferate” (regions where people and businesses can’t…
September 26, 2018 How claims SHOULD be handled Although this is an insurance company advertisement, and the policyholder is clearly reading from a script presumably written by the insurance company, it highlights how claims should be handled, and how they shouldn’t. We at UP fully recognize that catastrophe claims put strains on insurance company resources, and…
