251–260 of 712 posts
I used to work for Verisk, an insurance tech holding company, who owned a company that took pictures of people's roofs using airplanes and special cameras. They got sued over a patent violation with EagleView[1], who claimed the tech idea as their own, and settled. > The strategic alliance allows customers seamless and integrated access to EagleView technology within Verisk’s Xactware platform Xactware is a product t…
I recently started going through many big data collectors and expressing my rights to know, delete, and stop selling my information. Verisk makes the process notoriously difficult compared to other companies, you have to start an "ethics" report in their ticketing system https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/69464/ind...
Auburn, California, is a mistake and should be uninsurable, and I don't want either my tax dollars or my insurance premiums being used to subsidize the treehouse lifestyle of exurban home owners. Whether this specific person's roof is rotted or not isn't really the point. Right now, the real estate sprawl industry is running their printing press at 110% design speed, trying to convince everyone that people who live o…
Those in Auburn are, by the same idea, subsidizing windows that get smashed when parking downtown, or even if you walk, the extra risk that you are hurt by someone while walking in a place with more crime per square mile.
You can live far away from a downtown and have to get your car smogged, because we wanted cars in the cities to provide for clean air.
I don’t mean we need to accept all risk in society, but for me there’s a very worrying trend against ANY risk/cost that doesn’t directly benefit the person advocating against it.
Ultimately I know it comes back to the current economic situation, because if everyone feels like they’re struggling there’s less thought to care for others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every state requires you to hold some minimum level of car insurance, mortgages require a level of homeowners insurance, etc. The underlying problem is that it's a significant barrier for people if they get priced out of the market (even if it's for good reason). If you can't afford car insurance or no insurers will offer it to you then you legally cannot drive a car, and in the US that becomes a problem that spirals…
If you are such a risk when driving no insurer will touch you, I would like you off the road.
It is also the theory behind universal healthcare coverage, because people will have medical issues that eventually end them in the ER regardless of coverage status and someone has to get paid for services rendered. And also insurers will literally take any excuse to deny coverage if they can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would insurance being individually priced negate its value? The benefit of insurance is the pooling of the risk. The more individually it is priced, the more efficiently it works. (Not that I'm a fan of insurers spying on their customers from the sky...)
> Why would insurance being individually priced negate its value? Perfectly accurate insurance pricing would be for each policy to cost exactly the amount of covered losses in the period covered plus the overhead of managing the insurance, which obviously would be pointless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never valued insurance more than the moment at which I owned my house outright. If you're so financially secure that the loss of an asset that large is manageable, I sort of don't much care about what you think about insurance rates?
Apparently in your book anybody that isn't effectively negative on assets (everyone needs a place to live) is so rich they're not entitled to an opinion on insurance rates? This kind of weird aggro-dismissal seems like an inevitable result of "privilege" politics based around dragging everyone down to the lowest level. Having a place to live where one isn't burning heaps of money on rent should be our expected societ…
There's no way to moralize out of this!
Regarding minor claims: I think what I've learned about homeowners insurance is: don't make minor claims. That's not what the product is for. Homeowners insurance (1) protects you from total loss of your primary asset (ie, from fire) and (2) protects you from being bankrupted by lawsuits. If you use it to repair leaks, you're going to take a bath.
Have you applied for a homeowners policy recently? Literally one of the first questions insurers ask is: "have you made homeowners insurance claims?".
Insurance works on the basis of (a) quantifying risk and (b) charging fairly for the protection. In the long-term, getting better at (a) and consequently, (b), is in everybody’s interest. For far too long, certain risk covers have been under-charged. At the end of the day, difficulty in finding affordable insurance, or any insurance at all, tells you something about the level of risk and the ability of insurers to ch…
I think we have to get much more serious about prevention. People are doing this:
Fire safety:
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/24/1195331310/red-roof-house-fir...
Storm safety:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/mexico-beach-home-survives-hurrica...
We need to mandate this kind of building in new construction and modified construction.
It may be worthwhile to subsidize this, to help with turning existing high risks into low risks.
We need to be more severe on forbidding building in danger zones, and more accepting of insurers pricing these based on risk, so they don't have to leave the state, and others can be priced to more common levels of risk.
We also need to not allow rebuilding in areas that will have these problems again, without some way of mitigating. We should not have to pay for someone's third house in a flood zone. But if you can make it flood proof after the first one, great.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Generally yes, because the liability for injury would be on you, as the trampoline owner. Compare the probability of a guest breaking their leg when visiting your home vs if you have an unsafe trampoline. Insurers are prepared for the small risk in the former, but have not priced in the latter risk to a standard policy.
This is the main thing. Insurers know that the home owners are not going to file claims for their own family members. It is the ambulance chasing lawyers that target the insurance when guests are injured on your property. There have been claims against poorly maintained walkways when the ice is not removed when someone slips on your property. Much like how retail stores all now have Wet Floor signs from all the peopl…
If insurance is individually priced to this degree, what's the point of insurance?
“All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” - Charles Munger
But we don’t actually know the future that well, so even if we know that some houses are riskier than others, it’s still worth buying.