One of the questions we receive from our insurance customers is why are my home insurance premiums so high? Well the easy answer is that the rates are based on the claims paid and the operating expenses. That is the easy answer, but that does not answer the question! The real story is how the hail claims affect the cost of your policy.
The TOP FIVE states for hail claims are:
Texas (637,977) Colorado (380,066) Nebraska (161,374) Minnesota (150,673) Illinois (150,416). These are the results of a three year study. There are several types of policies that will respond to a hail claim, two of the most common are the home-property insurance and personal auto insurance. The home-property insurance accounted for 1,711,094 claims which was 62% of the total claims reported with the auto insurance in second place with 734,985 claims
In talking with insurance company managers and claims managers, I have asked on occasion how bad was that storm last month? The replies are varied but when the reply is; not too bad .. we only had 20,000 claims reported in the first two weeks. That number is shocking when you think of how many families have been affected by a hail storm, and that was just one company. How many companies offer home and auto insurance in Texas? And you have up to a year to file a hail claim so that number increases as time passes. Living in the Dallas-Ft Worth area hail storms are pretty common, and we may see hail so small it melts when it hits the ground, and hail almost as big as a baseball. You just never know.
So this is the story on the home insurance rates in Texas.
Statistics via National Insurance Crime Bureau