Earlier quoted context omitted.
The insurance companies are loosing money. Rates have to go up.
And yet there's seems to always been enough money for stock buybacks and disgustingly excessive executive compensation.
In insurance companies?
Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
291–300 of 712 posts
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#292> “If your roof is 20 years old and one hailstorm is going to take it off, you should pay more than somebody with a brand new roof,” If you've been paying for insurance for 20 years with one company, then I'd say that is certainly a dick move to drop you right before it might pay out. What even is the point then?
The (lesser) dick move is also pitting customers against each other.
Divide et impera. Works with insurance, social security, and third world countries.
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this were true, health insurers would have taken a cudgel to the US hospital system decades ago and come up with a more efficient system. They haven't because an opaque system allows them to maintain their own opaque practices.
Health insurance companies don’t care about what your doctor earns in the same way home insurance companies don’t care about the cost of the roofer. They’re going to price in whatever that cost may be and call it a day. Health insurance has it easier too because there’s not really a concept of correlated risk in human populations. Most people do a decent job avoiding hurting themselves but when a flood comes, there’s…
Health insurance companies do actually care, unfortunately. They're incentivized to embrace higher prices since they have to spend at least 80% of premiums on payouts. If you have a fixed margin, well, you have to increase premiums to increase profit, so higher prices means more profit.
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#294I don't really understand the privacy concern here. To wit: insurers can demand actual inspection of your home when making underwriting decisions. The condition of your house is very much their business. Why is an aerial photograph of your roof, which everybody in the world already has on Google Maps, such a big deal?
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#295> “If your roof is 20 years old and one hailstorm is going to take it off, you should pay more than somebody with a brand new roof,” If you've been paying for insurance for 20 years with one company, then I'd say that is certainly a dick move to drop you right before it might pay out. What even is the point then?
Do car insurances pay the full price for crashed old cars? If roofs are designed with a similarly limited expected useful life lower payout would make sense like for cars?
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#296Earlier 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.
I'd prefer that nearly all of us were off the road, but in practice we've not built a world that allows such a lifestyle.
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are insurance rates regulated by the government? I understand that the state has a strong interest in ensuring that insurance companies are adequately capitalized, but I don’t understand the state interest in directly regulating premium prices. (Or is that not what you are referring to?)
Ten-to-one you can go back to when the regulation started and find there was rampant, blatant abuse going on. That’s the usual story behind these kinds of things.
There is a saying that regulations are written in blood.
They may not have been well designed, or they may not wear well. But most of the time they are put in place because somebody got badly hurt, one way or another.
Industry could usually design itself better regulation. But unless it finds a way to mutually enforce compliance, the task will fall to government.
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#298I don't really understand the privacy concern here. To wit: insurers can demand actual inspection of your home when making underwriting decisions. The condition of your house is very much their business. Why is an aerial photograph of your roof, which everybody in the world already has on Google Maps, such a big deal?
The problem is the culling
Insurance companies are very keen to get as much risk as possible off their books before the climate gets even more extreme in its volatility
Good goes with bad, so long as the bad goes, some good going too is undesirable but OK because they are aware if the catastrophic climate events looming
The insurance companies are behaving logically, probably legally IANAL, but for people who are simply caught in the wash it is unfair
This is part of the huge systematic disruptions we are all going to have to adapt to, or die from, due to climate change
Worrying times
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Independent inspectors almost always say what whoever is paying them wants to hear (see: Florida). 10 years left on a roof usually means the next large wind storm will take it out, they’re not paid to look for that.
But independent inspectors usually generate a report that explains at least some of their rationale. Even if it is biased, it can at least be scrutinized. That is in sharp contrast to the insurance company that is supposedly making their determination based on drone photos that they won't even let their clients see .
If multiple insurance companies say you need a new roof, you need a new roof. Full stop. There’s no justification necessary.
Re: Home insurers are dropping customers based on aerial images
#300Allstate refused to offer a policy quote because my house is fuzzed out on its street view photo from 2011.