Insurance Space

The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote later this week on whether to repeal a decades-long anti-trust exemption for health insurance companies.

It’s a small piece of what was included in the original House health care reform bill. It would be the first major legislative action on overhauling health care since Democrats lost their supermajority in the Senate last month. Insurers say Congress should leave the exemption alone, but others say repealing it would lead to lower premiums.

If a fire destroyed your spacious four-bedroom home, complete with landscaping, home theater and wine cellar, would your insurance carrier expect you to live in a small one-bedroom apartment throughout the yearlong process of planning and building your new home? And what if the insurer limited your new home’s design to a modest cracker box, because your policy only covered “insured value” rather than “replacement value”?

Then you would know that all homeowner policies are not created equal.

A home insurance warning has been issued by a provider, after new figures revealed that liability claims for sports injuries are increasing.

According to Esure, more policies were being claimed on through personal liability for sport injuries. Personal liability is usually included with home contents policies, although it has remained unused.

Esure have issued the warning as there is potentially a large financial cost of being hit with such a case, and not having insurance can become very complex..

It’s the age of the designer policy in which local insurance companies roll out packages for home and content coverage customised to suit varying income brackets.

However, most Jamaicans are not biting.

Jason Goldsmith, underwriting manager at Globe Insurance Company of Jamaica’s Kingston broker division, notes that despite the greater frequency of storms and their attendant damage, there has been no significant increase in home- or content-insurance purchases.

coverage offered

Locally, general home-insurance companies offer coverage for fire, burglary, hurricane or windstorm, earthquake and flood, among other potential disasters. But, the larger proportion of local homeowners are disinterested.

Flood risk in some parts of the UK is affecting the home insurance premiums paid by Britons in all parts of the country.

A recent analysis suggests that homeowners living in places not considered prone to flooding are having the costs of other places considered risky passed on to them in their premiums.

This position was backed by the AA, which said home insurance premiums have risen since last year’s floods.

The insurance firm’s director, Simon Douglas, argued that the days of cheap home insurance policies are almost over.

Your home is likely to be the most expensive investment you ever make so it makes sense to protect it from accidents and burdensome additional expenses. It’s hardly surprising then that home insurance, though not legally obligatory, is considered by most homeowners to be an important and worthwhile investment. As with any such policy the value of home insurance lies in the peace of mind it affords.

What a standard home insurance policy covers

Are insurance companies giving their policyholders a fair deal when they make a claim on their household or motor insurance? It would appear not, judging by the letters we have received from readers.

The main bone of contention is that premiums can rise sharply, simply because the policyholder has had the temerity to make a claim. The fact that they have been loyal customers paying premiums for years, does not seem to count at all. Even minor claims worth less than ?100 can result in premiums being bumped up by as much as 20 per cent.

More than half a million homes in England could become uninsurable unless action is taken to protect them against flooding, the insurance industry warned today.

In a report published a year after thousands of homes in Hull were hit by flooding, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) warned that its members could stop offering flood protection as standard on all home insurance policies.

It said insurers could not commit to covering the 517,000 homes identified by the Environment Agency as being at significant risk of flooding, unless the government announced plans for them to be adequately defended.

Apparently, on the 27th February, at nearly 1am, there was an earthquake in the UK. I didn’t notice it, but it lasted approximately two minutes, registered 5.2 on the Richter scale, and was overall a very British sort of earthquake – the only injuries were caused by falling chimney pots, and across most of the nation people could be heard saying things like “Well I never!” or “Now there’s a thing!”, before tutting, rearranging their shelves, and returning to whatever book they were reading in bed. Oh, and at least one tabloid found a semi-naked young couple, for whom that night the earth had moved a little more than usual, with which to adorn its front page. Not so much the Lincolnshire Earthquake, then, as “Carry On Up The Richter”.

Mercury General Corp. announced Tuesday that it will cut auto and homeowner insurance rates for about 1.7 million customers this year, projecting the savings at $61 million.

Most of the savings comes from a 3-percent reduction in auto insurance rates that took effect last month. Mercury, which is the third-largest auto insurance in California, reduced annual rates by about $30 per vehicle for 1.5 million customers.

Mercury also planned to drop its homeowner insurance rates by 10 percent as of August, saving 224,000 customers about $80 to $100 a year, depending on where they live in the state.