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Blue Valley Insurance Agency Blog

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Insurance

Fall Home & Auto Insurance Premium Updates

Home Insurance

Our last newsletter talked about  wood roofs being a problem for new business going forward as well as some of our carriers increasing their minimum deductibles.  This won’t change anytime soon. 

The good news is that we have had a pretty mild hail/wind year compared to last year.  The profitability for the insurance carriers should bode well for our territory in the foreseeable future.  The market is still a hard market with home premiums averaging 5-10% increases, but the silver-lining is that if we continue to have better weather it will force carriers to be more competitive... softening the premium increases and/or keeping them level come renewal time. 

We can't get to excited because it is going to take more than one year of good weather to re-coup the last 3 years’ loss ratios.

One thing that we have noticed all our standard carriers have come back hard on is that they don’t want mono-line home insurance. This means, if they don’t insurance your cars, they don’t want to insure just your home.  You may even see evidence of this in your renewal rates if we don’t have your autos packaged.  

Auto premiums/policies have been the flag-ship of profitability for most carriers.  Since home insurance has not, the carriers want more rounded business to hedge against the losses on the home. 

It is very important that if you have a home insured with us and not your cars, you should look into packaging both policies with the same carrier.  It will most likely save around 20% on your home insurance AND you won’t see the renewal volatility in your premiums.  

Not everyone is the same so this won’t fit for all but I wanted to keep you all informed.


Auto Insurance

Auto insurance premiums, as stated before, have been pretty flat and many of our carriers have continued to file lower rates on auto insurance.  Especially those people with continued good driving, no accidents, etc, you all should have seen either flat or decreasing auto rates. 

If you haven’t, the only other reason could be credit related.  We have noticed a few people incur rate hikes due solely to their Credit Matrix.  As silly as that sounds, all our carriers are using predictive analysis now where your credit score will have a major impact on your rates.  The better the credit, the better your rates will be.


Discussion

Diane Lyons

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 at 8:50am CDT

Allen: Just read the article above and am concerned about the fact we only have our home insurance with you. I think you have our vehicle information in our file and if it is necessary or if we are going to see an increase, I need to see where we would stand if we made the switch OR we may have to switch our home owner’s insurance back. Please email me on what you would need to give us a quote and/or advice.


Phllip & Janice Runyan

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 at 9:27am CDT

We have out auto & homeowners combined with Blue Valley/Safeco.
Would you please review our policies or check other companies to see if there’s a way to save or lower our premiums?
Thanks


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