I agree, and you are absolutely correct about finding another company to place someone. My worry and it seems to be happening is most of the companies I deal with seem to be all similar in pricing. The hardest thing for me as an agent is folks in Iowa are not used to these prices and when your home insurance goes from 1300 a year to 2100 in one cycle most are shocked, of I am lucky I might find an option for 1800. Plus all the new restrictions on roofs make things even harder. 5 years new, 10 years new it is not eligible. Has agents and insureds frustrated.
I certainly do not feel bad for them, most have made their own bed. However like anything else they are a business, one who only exists if they make money, so yes when they lose, they will charge more and if they see no chance for profitability they will stop or restrict new business, raise rates on current business or just straight leave the State as about 6 or 7 companies have.
Go back the last 25 years and how many of those were extremely profitable vs how many weren't? I get they are a business but they are proving they are a business that only wants to exist in a business environment where their customers don't actually ever use the service they pay for. I call ******** on the entire premise of that argument.
It's complete ********* that they can charge you for years and bail when it gets tough. That's literally the point of insurance, to spread the risk out.
Pure insanity. All these companies do is play odds, they gamble on those odds every time they price a policy. There's always a chance those odds bite them, but long term the house always wins. The house won for 42 out of 45 years and you get banned from their casino. Crooked mfers.
I worked in insurance for a long time and still have many good friends there. I can assure you it’s more than just a couple of bad years. Covid, climate change; especially the derecho, social inflation, new technology in vehicles have all made it harder to make money as an insurance carrier. The place I worked recorded a TCR under 100, twice in 10 years. That’s not good. Last thing that I’ll mention if the reinsurance companies have a major impact on carriers. They are tired of losing money so they are dictating much more aggressive terms. The whole thing sucks.
You don't have to have insurance. You can bond against your autos and self insure your home if you'd like. Just better have that million-plus in the bank up front.
Maybe the old one, this one is too busy playing politics to do any work that would help common people.
"Trade Combined Ratio". 100 means you break even, and companies will often target something like a 90-95 TCR for rate making. These expense and profit targets along with the actuarial justifications have to be filed (usually ~ 5 year rollups). The whole industry had a TCR of like 102 in 2023 and 103 in 2022, and there are companies that are hitting 80-85, so that means there are companies that are extremely unprofitable running 120-130 in some years.
Yep! I get home insurance, wind insurance, and flood insurance. All went up about 30% each from last year. And I have never made a claim once. To make it worse, insurance companies are pulling out of the area leaving us will almost no option to get coverage that our mortgage requires. If something forces us to go back to renting, insurance prices will probably be it.
Correct, the Department of Insurance for each state has to approve rate increases. Insurance companies also have to prove that they can pay their claims. Recently we have seen carriers have their financial rating downgraded which is bad news. Many smaller mutual companies have just gone out of business. Others like Hastings Mutual are pulling out of Personal Lines all together, and limiting what they will write in the Farm space. The market is a mess.
