Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

expressnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 59 posts

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#31

Post by zulux »

owenthejumper wrote: post #14

I live around at around a 150ft elevation above the ocean, but technically within My car insurance is above $4k/yr for two family cars, rising annually despite no accidents. Meanwhile, "normal" countries are solving these problems in reasonable ways. Back home in Central Europe, you get state mandated car insurance at pre-negotiated rates that are based on the car, not the driver. US insurance is a scam.

>> Rates that are based on the car, not the driver.

I like my low very rates. I don't want to pay higher rates for people who can't parallel park. They can suffer their skill issues.

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#32

Post by snowwrestler »

willis936 wrote: post #2

USAA doesn't operate its own mortgages anymore. They sell them day one which usually results in another sale or company acquisition within a year. The cure? Take your business elsewhere. FCUs don't have this same reputation and generally open with less predatory rates. USAA had a great run of building trust and is speedrunning torching it.

What does this have to do with their insurance business? As far as I can tell this is just a random complaint about USAA.

And it doesn’t even make sense financially. The “brand” of your mortgage provider adds absolutely nothing to the utility. When shopping for a mortgage, just pick the lowest possible rate, it does not matter from whom. Loans get sold all the time and that is a good thing as it helps minimize rates through raw competition.

USAA at one time had aims of being a comprehensive financial company and they gave those up years ago. Brokerages got sold to Schwab, IRAs to Victory, etc. Again, this is a good thing as there was no way they were going to be able to compete in all those categories. Specialization is good.

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#33

Post by sanderwebs »

zulux wrote: post #31
owenthejumper wrote: post #14

I live around at around a 150ft elevation above the ocean, but technically within My car insurance is above $4k/yr for two family cars, rising annually despite no accidents. Meanwhile, "normal" countries are solving these problems in reasonable ways. Back home in Central Europe, you get state mandated car insurance at pre-negotiated rates that are based on the car, not the driver. US insurance is a scam.

>> Rates that are based on the car, not the driver. I like my low very rates. I don't want to pay higher rates for people who can't parallel park. They can suffer their skill issues.

I think you may not fully understand how much more expensive insurance is in the US and how bad of a deal you get here.

In the Netherlands my standard car insurance came with a bodily injury liability limit of 6.5MM and property damage liability limit of 2.5MM at a cost of only around €25 per month.

You usually cannot even get limits that high from insurers in US, let alone at such a cheap rate.

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#34

Post by mindslight »

lq9AJ8yrfs wrote: post #22
thegreatpeter wrote: post #8

is it easy or hard to start an insurance company? why isn't there more competition when it comes to insurance?

You need a capital base in proportion to the policies you sell in order to pay them out without going bust, to a certain confidence level. The time sequence of premium payments vs when the risk is expected to come due for a payout is factored in. The 50 states regulate insurance in the US and issue rules about how to do this, some of which affect competition and pricing in heavy handed ways, sometimes it's overtly po…

> Not sure where the popular impression that it is not competitive comes from

The fact that it goes up 20-30% every year (no claims, obviously), that I cannot raise my deductibles to significantly lower my premiums, the whole skin-job of "agents" that provide an illusion of choices to confuse the market, and that they've bought a friendly regulatory regime that lets them price discriminate by capping coverage maximums when the whole point of insurance is to cover long-tail risks. Never mind that their chief "innovation" over the past few years has been pushing surveillance devices that track your driving, finding reasons to cancel policies, and whatnot.

I've also bumped into a few different people who shut down their small businesses over untenable commercial rates. The whole industry is a massive drag on our economy. I've no doubt that the accountants/actuaries find places for the money to go that isn't just executives' pockets, but that's of little consolation.

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#35

Post by ortusdux »

_fat_santa wrote: post #28
monster_group wrote: post #12

At this point, I buy all insurance (home, auto, health etc.) with highest deductible and lowest premium knowing that there is a high probability that insurance will not pay (or pay only partially). I mainly buy insurance to avoid catastrophic losses and hope that, if such an event were to happen, they would cover the loss at least partially. For smaller losses I am willing to absorb the loss and save money on premium…

When me and my wife were purchasing our first home, we had everyone from mortgage people to realtors to our own friends and family that owned homes tell us to never use our home insurance unless it was something truly catastrophic. Currently our home insurance deductible is $10k. The logic is that anything less than that we can pay ourselves. Home insurance is only there to cover either catastrophic damage or really,…

We 'pruned' our coverage and put the savings into an account labeled 'self-insurance'.

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#36

Post by botacode »

lq9AJ8yrfs wrote: post #25
botacode wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The capital requirements and regulatory barriers to start an insurer are extremely high.

There are lots of small insurers at least. Multiple resources on the internet put the startup costs at $500K or less. That's not much more than fast food or other high touch retail startups by comparison. There are certainly a few steps on the learning curve but it's mostly high school and undergraduate math that is needed. That puts it out of reach for some but the field is pretty flat once you get there, is my pers…

It is a commodity product but, again, the regulatory and capital hurdles to get started are significant. As you scale you need more and the exact reserve requirements are often at the discretion of regulators. Opening a McDonalds franchise it is not.

See for example the minimums here: https://www.insurance.ca.gov/0250-insurers/0300-insurers/010....

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#37

Post by schmookeeg »

doodlebugging wrote: post #21

This is interesting because it doesn't fit with my own experiences dealing with USAA home or auto insurance claims. During 2025 we had contacted them twice to file claims and in both cases the claims were paid according to the existing policy coverage level with zero hassle. Our initial contacts were by telephone and almost all of the paperwork was managed thru their online portal with follow-up phone calls to insure…

This is my experience too. In our auto claim, the dealership expressed relief that we had "US PayPay" for our insurer. No (or less) nickel and diming apparently and smooth payment.

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#38

Post by Kirby64 »

monster_group wrote: post #12

At this point, I buy all insurance (home, auto, health etc.) with highest deductible and lowest premium knowing that there is a high probability that insurance will not pay (or pay only partially). I mainly buy insurance to avoid catastrophic losses and hope that, if such an event were to happen, they would cover the loss at least partially. For smaller losses I am willing to absorb the loss and save money on premium…

What do you consider catastrophic loss? I’ve found in home insurance the delta on lower deductibles isn’t that meaningful and when something happens, the pay out is almost always worth it. Something like water damage from a burst pipe can be 20-50k very quickly, and having to pay a 10k deductible is quite a big hit in addition to the remediation needed.

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#39

Post by doodlebugging »

schmookeeg wrote: post #37
doodlebugging wrote: post #21

This is interesting because it doesn't fit with my own experiences dealing with USAA home or auto insurance claims. During 2025 we had contacted them twice to file claims and in both cases the claims were paid according to the existing policy coverage level with zero hassle. Our initial contacts were by telephone and almost all of the paperwork was managed thru their online portal with follow-up phone calls to insure…

This is my experience too. In our auto claim, the dealership expressed relief that we had "US PayPay" for our insurer. No (or less) nickel and diming apparently and smooth payment.

That "US PayPay" is pretty funny. That is similar to the name our dealership adjuster called them. He said that they are very good about coverage and will work with repair facilities to get the vehicles back on the road. I wanted them to skip the aftermarket parts for our car and just use OEM parts, some on which had to be shipped from Japan (older vehicle), and they approved everything and checked with us after the work was complete to make sure we were satisfied with the repair facility (a local dealership's shop).

Our roofing contractor said pretty much the same thing. He said they are comprehensive in their damage assessments so the coverage quoted after their rep visits tends to be very close to actual damages that should be repaired. They will adjust if you can document something they missed. Very easy to work with, he said.

Re: USAA closed 51% of home insurance claims without making a payment in 2025

#40

Post by doodlebugging »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #26
doodlebugging wrote: post #21

This is interesting because it doesn't fit with my own experiences dealing with USAA home or auto insurance claims. During 2025 we had contacted them twice to file claims and in both cases the claims were paid according to the existing policy coverage level with zero hassle. Our initial contacts were by telephone and almost all of the paperwork was managed thru their online portal with follow-up phone calls to insure…

I’ve had similar experience with USAA I had a leak and they covered an entire new hardwood floor for the deductible cost with basically no questions and a handful of pictures my rates are reasonable for everything

I agree. They are easy to work with. Easy to reach online or over the phone. I'm glad we switched all those years ago.
Post reply on HN