Did your homeowners insurance premium go
\nup this year? Mine did. Of course I live just
\noutside of Austin, Texas, where wildfire risk
\nhas risen significantly as the state battles ongoing
\nsevere drought.<\/p>\n
Even with a nearly 25% increase in annual homeowners
\npremium, I was relatively pleased that I didn\u2019t receive a nonrenewal notice as did
\nmany homeowners in my neighboring community. While I wasn\u2019t happy to pay more, I do
\nunderstand why \u2014 there are more and more claims driven by catastrophe weather events
\nnationwide.<\/p>\n
But after reading many posts on my neighbors\u2019 social media, it was clear that many
\npeople had no idea why their insurance premiums rose substantially or why their carrier
\ndecided to cancel their coverage after 10, 15, 20 years of no claims.
\nThat lack of knowledge by property owners appears to show in this year\u2019s J.D. Power
\nreport on 2024 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction. With 28 catastrophic weather events
\nin 2023 causing nearly $93 billion in damage, customer service satisfaction plunged to a
\nseven year low, the study found. More extreme weather events led to a larger number of
\nhigh-severity claims and longer claims settlement times, negatively affecting satisfaction.
\nThe average claims cycle time \u2014 the amount of time from reporting the claim to finished
\nrepairs \u2014 has now reached 23.9 days, over six days longer than in 2022.
\nFor claims related to catastrophic events, that
\naverage repair cycle time jumped to 34.2 days.
\nAs a result, customer satisfaction has declined
\nby five points to 869 (on a 1,000-point scale)
\nfrom a year ago, the study found.
\nThe average overall satisfaction score among
\ncustomers who experienced catastrophic claims
\nis 841.<\/p>\n
\u201cCatastrophic weather events are straining an
\nalready fragile system still experiencing supply
\nchain issues that affect the availability and cost of materials,\u201d said Mark Garrett, director of
\nclaims intelligence at J.D. Power. \u201cResources become strained for both insurers and the contractors
\ndoing the work. Unfortunately, it\u2019s when claims last beyond three weeks that J.D.
\nPower sees things decline. When claims last less than three weeks, satisfaction improves,
\nso it\u2019s the longer claims that are solely responsible for the decline. Insurers are challenged
\nto manage expectations and proactively communicate during longer claim periods as
\ncustomers tend to have more questions when experiencing delays.\u201d
\nBecause of rising insurance premiums, when customers have a claim and have to cover
\n$1,500 or more in costs, the study found that satisfaction is negatively affected, even if it is
\nto cover their deductible.<\/p>\n
The increasing frequency of catastrophic weather events coupled with policies that often
\nhave higher deductibles for this type of weather (wind, hail, named storms, etc.), means
\nmore customers will be paying higher deductibles.<\/p>\n
Andrea Wells
\nV.P. of Content, INSURANCE JOURNAL APRIL 1, 2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Did your homeowners insurance premium go up this year? Mine did. Of course I live just outside of Austin, Texas, where wildfire risk has risen significantly as the state battles ongoing severe drought. Even with a nearly 25% increase in annual homeowners premium, I was relatively pleased that I didn\u2019t receive a nonrenewal notice as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":721,"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sumnertoner.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}