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

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

#51
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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.

The Netherlands are filled with Netherlanders. The US... not so much.

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

#52

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…

this exact behaviour is why insurance is getting more expensive

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

#53
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is perfectly valid. There is no single right answer. It just depends on what risk level one is comfortable with and that varies from person to person.

I’d agree there’s no single right answer, but I think generally a risk profile for an insurance product that is so outsized against you seems like a poor decision. This isn’t like putting all your money in meme stocks or something, this is more akin to selling risky stock options. The downside potential is massive and essentially uncapped, whereas the upside potential is meager.

Downside is not "essentially uncapped". That would be the case if I did not have insurance. I do have insurance - one with high deductible with a fixed maximum loss that I am willing to accept should such an event happen.

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

#54
Just to add an anecdote to this, USAA customer for 20+ years. I had two claims in 2025 against a rental property policy for a condo in Chicago I lived in for ~10 years and rented out for about a year and a half before selling a couple months ago.

First claim was for a leak caused by a broken pipe due to the building settling. The adjuster went missing for months, took 6+ months to get payment and resolution after emailing and calling almost every day. I think the final total was ~15k which was covered between the HOA's insurance and my insurance. I was also out of pocket for several thousand just trying to diagnose the issue since it wasn't initially clear what was causing the issue, ended up having to cut into the walls just to find the issue which they of course did not entirely cover.

Second claim was for sewer backup that flooded the unit causing 50k+ worth of damage. They initially outright denied the claim, which I had to push back on by escalating up to a senior adjuster. Again, took them MONTHS to payout, causing huge delays in the repairs, which caused the tenant to sue me for breach of the lease contract. Tried to help the tenant use their renter's insurance to get alternate lodging while the repairs were going on but they refused for some reason. I had to threaten to sue USAA and to pull my policies for them to get any movement on my claim. They ended up covering up to approximately the policy maximum (25k) and made up about 15k of the rest from loss-of-use but I had to absolutely bully the manager I finally was able to get into contact with. Out of pocket like 10-15k after settling with the tenant.

Obviously I'm biased but even a cursory reading of the policy made it obvious to me both issues were very squarely covered and it was absolutely like pulling teeth to get them to do anything. Unfortunately I don't know if any other company would've been better.

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

#55

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…

That is how insurance is supposed to work. It's not meant to cover everything. Only the things that are hard to pay.

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

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who should people use instead? I switched to USAA because of their good reputation after bad experiences. I’ve heard good things about Farmers and USAA. Never anything positive about another.

I use State Farm for insurance. They’ve have similar issues, but are also about to pay out their largest dividend of $5B to auto policy holders as a mutual company (owned by their policyholders) due to underwriting performance. For mortgages, I can recommend Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU), now merged with First Tech. They held the note and the servicing. https://sfdividend.com/ https://www.firsttechfed.com/merger

Same, and the couple of times I had to use them for car insurance (and once for renters) over 20 years, they've been great. Thankfully, I haven't had to use them for home insurance yet.

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

#57
post #23

Note that there are four different USAA insurance companies. Your military rank and how you got referred for membership will determine which one you join (listed highest/best to lowest): United Services Automobile Association - Officers and senior NCOs USAA Casualty Insurance Company - Enlisted (E-1 to E-7) and children of the above USAA General Indemnity Company - National Guard, Reserve Garrison Property and Casual…

Interesting, I never realized they had different companies based on membership type!

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

#58

A touch of nuance from someone in the industry (CTO at a startup that sells home and umbrella insurance): Most of the issues here stem from problem the sales as opposed to the claims process. Customers are, structurally, under-educated on what their policies actually cover and this produces unrealistic expectations about what they should file claims for. Emphatically, this is not their fault but an industry-wide issu…

What do you guys do when the LLM hallucinates? Someone puts a claim in on the basis of what the LLM instructed and its false, are you still taking responsibility? Geniune question, interesting to see where the liability is resting in a regulated industry as opposed to just chat bots.

My understanding is that this remains unsettled law. We've added a disclaimer after seeing the big players (OAI, Ant) do the same and focus on ensuring LLMs get things right / outperforms those less specialized tools.

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

#59
post #4

they've slowly gone from being one of the most progressive and customer focused financial institutions (they invented at home electronic deposit of checks) to a gross regular bank / insurance company.

It seems like credit unions are basically superior to regular banks. Is this not true?

Credit unions are superior to banks... Navy FCU is incredible
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