My email has been bombarded with notices since Monday from most of the insurance companies and brokers I work with. Each one has announced they are issuing a binding moratorium due to Tropical Storm Cindy. I thought this provided a good time to understand what an insurance moratorium is and how it impacts individuals and businesses when they occur.
A client sent me an email asking me to quote a builder’s risk policy for a barndominium she and her husband are planning to build. I haven’t watched HGTV’s Fixer Upper series, so I called her to find out what a barndominium is, as well as to ask her the questions I needed answered to quote a builder’s risk policy for them. After finding several builder’s risk policy options for them, I began researching what companies will write a barndominium insurance policy once the construction is complete.
Hurricane Matthew has come and gone and left a trail of damage in its wake stretching from the Caribbean through Virginia. Every storm leaves its own statistical imprint as Matthew did. Here are some of the numbers worth mentioning.
Every once in a while, I’m asked by a mortgage loan officer or processor if the home insurance policy a client has selected includes guaranteed replacement cost coverage. In most instances, the answer is no, however, there are a few carriers that still offer this. I thought we’d take a look at that as we conclude this series on home insurance coverage and forms.
I was talking with a person the other week about home insurance. They asked whether the policy I had proposed was a named peril or all risk, or open peril, policy. It’s an excellent question and one we should delve into to expand on last week’s post, The Three Home Insurance Form Types (see https://wiseinsurancegroup.com/three-home-insurance-form-types/).
Insurance companies write home policies based on industry standard forms or policy types as outlined by the Insurance Standards Office. These standard forms are used to define how policies will be written and what coverage is included. There are 6 home insurance policy types including home, renters, and condo policies. This post, however, will focus on the 3 most common ones written in Texas
Most Texas homeowners never have to think about wind insurance, it’s included with their home policy. When you see the wind / hail deductible listed with an amount or percentage next to it, this indicates your home policy covers it. Those Texans who own homes along our Gulf Coast, however, do need to think about wind insurance. Many home insurance companies don’t include wind coverage so those homeowners have to look elsewhere for this coverage.
Tropical Storm Colin serves as a great reminder for Texas homeowners to take a few minutes to perform an insurance review that’s focused on hurricanes and the type of claims that occur. To help with that, let’s delineate who and what needs to be reviewed by tiers and the type of coverage.
Over the last 8 weeks, Texas has been struck by four major hail storms, three in the Dallas / Fort Worth area and one in San Antonio. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, initial estimates for the two hail storms that struck north Texas were a combined $1.3 billion in damages to homes, vehicles, and businesses. The estimated total number of vehicles struck by hail in those two storms alone was 80,000. The storm that hit in early April should push the damage totals for all three north Texas storms close to $2 billion.
There’s an adage that says, “Lightening doesn’t strike the same place twice.” That may or may not be true for lightening, but hail, it appears, isn’t that selective. The storm that raked across north Texas last week struck many of the same communities and homes that were struck on March 23. One of the first calls I received from clients was from a couple who were hit by both storms. I think this is a good backdrop to address the question of how insurance companies respond to multiple hail claims for the same client.
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