Hi everybody this is Tracy Bookman owner of Homestead Roofing
and welcome to another one of our walk in the park videos, although you can see
we're not walking in the park today, but we've got a pretty important
question that we need to answer in in the aftermath of yesterday's hail
storm. So the question that we're going to put
to our local expert is: if I file an insurance claim because
of hail damage, is that going to make my insurance rates
go up? We're going to do a quick ask the expert interview with
Craig England with Farmer's Insurance. I'm going to turn this over to Craig
just real quick let him give a quick introduction
of himself and who he is, what he does, and where he is.
Yeah thank you Tracy I appreciate that. My name is Craig England, I'm a Farmer's
Insurance agent here in Falcon located in the
State Bank here in Falcon, so I mostly serve the
local community here but all over the springs as well.
All right so Craig let's just jump right into that specific question because we
did ask that a lot. People want they're afraid to file an
insurance claim because they think that, that their insurance company is going to
raise their rates if they file a claim because of a storm because of a
catastrophic event like a hailstorm, is that true, is an insurance
company going to raise an individual's insurance premiums because of a
catastrophic event? That is true they, they can they can rate
for those claims whatever claims they put on a homeowners and I think
people are confused by that sometimes because of
auto insurance right, and typically hail damage on an auto is not going to affect
that individual's rates for auto insurance. Homeowners insurance is
different that will affect the rate for them
going forward if they turn a claim in whether or not the insurance company
ends up paying money out. Wow! So that's news to me I didn't,
I honestly didn't know that. I thought catastrophic events were kind of
somehow exempted from, from affecting somebody's rates and
stuff like that. But now I knew that, that across the board, this is what I had
always heard, across the board everybody's rates would go up when there
was a catastrophic event because insurance companies are trying to cover
that event. So let me ask you this other question
then, you as an insurance agent or underwriting if you're seeing
multiple claims on somebody's record maybe it's
in a three-year period or a five-year period I'm not sure exactly what it is,
but if you're seeing two or three claims on somebody's record does that
cause any red flags to pop up for you? Yeah absolutely so companies will look
at that and I should clarify sometimes when it
is considered a catastrophic loss companies will consider that right, so it
may not affect it or it may not affect it as
much, every company is going to put that into their
rating system a little bit differently but
it's not always just a free a free claim either.
So as far as eligibility goes that absolutely,
kinda the same thing it can still affect it right they're still going to
look at that some companies are going to see that it
was a catastrophic loss and you know judge that less
less strictly right or they may make an exception for a cat.
claim rather than a normal claim but in general yeah the turning in a claim
on your insurance most companies at two you
start seeing a lot of companies not want to write that business if you
have two claims on that record. Almost every company three claims is
going to be ineligible in the past five years, and if you
have more than three it's very very difficult to find somebody to
to insure your home at that point. Wow. Okay
so one just one more question and this is kind
of a question that I've heard out there rumors about this and that's the
clue report and maybe you could address this,
some people think okay well yeah I filed a claim
on a house that I owned a couple years ago now I don't own that house anymore
so I'm okay to file a claim on my new house,
how does the clue report work with all of that?
Is it that your clue report is like your credit score and it's following you
around? Yeah so they can see claims that that
the individual is made, so, so a lot of those those claims will
will follow you. So if you've had a claim in the past year and you moved to a new
house, a company may still rate for that, that
claim that you had in your prior residence. Wow so if
just real quick tell us about claims without pay.
We're very very cautious when we're meeting with homeowners,
they've asked us whether or not they should file an insurance claim. We're
super super cautious about telling people to file an insurance claim
simply because of claims without pay. Just speak to that from
real briefly. Yeah absolutely and that's, that's one of our biggest concerns too.
I always tell my customers make sure you call me before you
you call the claims number you know and just turn in a claim right.
And what I would advise them to do is to, to talk to a local roofer,
get an estimate on that roof someone they can trust
that is going to be honest with them whether or not that's going to be worth
going through the claims process so we can avoid those zero
you know zero paid claims because those zero paid claims
speaking to the eligibility will, will still affect that.
So if you have two zero paid claims and then you have
one claim where they actually do pay for your new roof,
that's still three claims on your your record and that can definitely
affect your rates and your eligibility. Wow.
Hey Craig thanks so much for taking the time with us today I really
appreciate it. Just me calling you on a whim and asking
if you'll do this in the aftermath of yesterday's storm
but hey if anybody has any questions specifically about the insurance process
it'd probably be better to call Craig since he's
an insurance agent, I'm just the roofer right. So
you've got insurance specific questions give Craig a call.
Craig what's your phone number? Yeah phone number the office here
is 719-559-3276 and if you forget that it's five
five nine farm. Okay that's easy. Yeah right? Yeah and if you've got any
roofing related questions feel free to give us a call
Homestead Roofing
719-433-6991 you can also visit our website homestead roofing
colorado we got a ton of other information out there
lots of informational videos lots of education we love to educate
homeowners about this whole process. So until our next video
I'm Tracy Bookman owner of Homestead Roofing.