If You Buy Flood Insurance, Your Next Bill Might Be A Shocker!

In the United States, flood insurance is very much a subsidized product.  You see, flood insurance, by its very nature, runs against the basic rules of the insurance industry.  With flood insurance, only people in flood zones will buy it.  Homeowners insurance and auto insurance are different.  Any house could burn, so every home owner will buy insurance and spread the risk around.  But flood insurance is very different as the risk of loss only applies to those in known flood zones thus removing the ability of insurance to spread the risk.  So, in order to make a market for flood insurance, the federal government created the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and either over time or perhaps even from the beginning and by design, they allowed the rates to be set far below what is needed to pay the losses generated in the program.

These subsidies made the NFIP a real target in these days of federal budget cutting.  And since the NFIP has to be reauthorized from time to time, it’s reauthorization now became contingent on these subsidies going away.  Enter the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reformation Act of 2012, which reauthorizing the NFIP through September 30, 2017, but also included a mandate to eliminate the subsidized premiums.  The result of this legislation is that  many who buy flood insurance can now expect to pay quite a bit more for flood insurance.

This unwinding of subsidies means that rate increases will happen for consumers in one of two ways.  They will either see 25% rate increases each year for an undetermined number of years into the future, or they will see immediately higher rates as their policy is forced into a post-firm conversion to post-firm rates.  Either way, if you buy flood insurance then, you will likely be facing much higher rates for all renewals and changes that take place after October 1, 2013.

Earlier I mentioned pre-FIRM and post-FIRM rating programs and this needs a brief explanation.  These terms simply describe the rating table from which the rates for flood insurance are taken.  Pre-FIRM buildings are those built before January 1, 1975 or built before their community adopted its first Flood Insurance Rate Map (FIRM).  And while there are some exceptions to the rule, if your home is a pre-FIRM home, located in flood zones A, V, or D, then you should expect 25% rate increases on your flood insurance policy each year for the foreseeable future.  I assume that these rate increases will stop once your rates have gradually increased to match post-FIRM rates.  If your building or home is a pre-FIRM building and located in flood zones A, V, or D and the building was not insured on a NFIP policy prior to July 6, 2012, or was purchased by a new owner after July, 6, 2012 or have experienced a lapse in flood coverage on or after October 4, 2012, then that building will be immediately reclassified into the higher cost post-FIRM rating.  If this happens then your policy will take on all of the rate increase needed to remove all subsidies immediately.

If you have a home or building that will need to be moved from pre-FIRM to post-FIRM categorization,  then you will do a few things to make sure that you maintain your eligibility for flood insurance.  This means that you must submit a new elevation certificate on your property along with current photos of the front and back of your building. 

As the federal government eliminates flood insurance subsidies, some homeowners will find themselves facing higher premiums and perhaps even additional paperwork and eligibility issues.   If you buy flood insurance now, then you can expect to receive some notifications of the rate changes, along with instructions on what you must do to remain eligible to continue to purchase flood insurance.  Please read all of this information carefully, and pay attention to deadlines to make sure that you can continue to buy this insurance for your flood risk building.  If you need any help with your flood insurance or have questions about this program, please feel free to call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557.

Clinard Insurance Group is an independent insurance agency located in Winston Salem, NC.  We insure thousands of families and businesses all across NC, GA, TN, and SC.  We can help you with your auto insurance, home insurance, life insurance and business insurance with specialized niche programs for artisan contractors, landscapers insurance, restaurant insurance, used car dealers insurance, painters insurance and auto repair shop insurance.  If we can help you in any way, please call us, toll free at 877-687-7557.

The Coverage For Your Roof On Your Homeowners Insurance May Be Changing

Scientists tell us that 2012 was the hottest year on record in the United States.  Global warming is here and we are seeing more frequent and more intense storms. This puts a lot of pressure on rates for property insurance in general and homeowners insurance in particular.   In North Carolina that means more frequent and more intense windstorms and hailstorms.  Wind and hail losses in North Carolina in 2011 sent the homeowners insurance marketplace into a tailspin.  One the one hand, insurance companies were taking huge losses in home insurance while on the other hand the insurance commissioner was unwilling to allow them the rate increases that they needed as he was facing re-election.  The result has been a continued chaotic home insurance marketplace in our state.

To protect themselves from further losses and without any chance of getting rate increases the insurance companies started to look at other options.  The first and most obvious move was to require that a client included their more profitable auto policy in order to qualify for home insurance.  Next, the insurance companies drug out an old and arcane technique known as  the consent to rate letter, to try for rate increases on a policy by policy basis.  Along with that came mass cancellations and nonrenewals of existing home insurance policies and a few insurance companies cancelled all of their policies in our state and left the state entirely.

Now we all know the old saying that you can’t squeeze water out of a rock.  So if an insurance company can’t get the rates they need to be profitable but want to stay in the home insurance business, what are their options?   Well the next place they have to look is at the coverage they provide in the policy with an eye toward reducing that coverage.  In North Carolina, the cause of the most losses on home insurance has been wind and hail claims, especially to roofs.  So we are now beginning to see some of the larger insurance companies in our state taking action to reduce the coverage in their policies for these kinds of claims. 

One way to reduce the costs of claims from roof damage is to change the policy language so that when a roof is damaged the amount paid out for the claim is based on the depreciated value of the roof instead of the replacement value of the roof.  At this time, most policies in NC still provide replacement cost protection on roof damage claims but that is changing quickly.  Several big companies have already begun to change their policies to pay claims based only on the depreciated value of the roof.  And as the big boys go, so goes the entire market when it comes to this kind of thing.

Let’s take an example to help illustrate what this might mean for you, a NC homeowners policy holder.  Assume that you have a 20 year roof on your house that is 15 years old when a hailstorm blows through your neighborhood and damages your roof.  With a traditional replacement cost policy your claim would equal the cost of putting on a new, 20 year roof.  For the sake of this example, let’s assume that new roof will cost $20,000.  Now, if your policy coverage has been modified to limit roof claims to the depreciated value of the roof instead of replacement cost, then your claim will be for only $5000.  This is because your roof only has ¼ of its value left on it based on its age so you only receive ¼ of the replacement cost of your roof.  Imagine having to come up with $15,000 right away to repair your roof after a bad hailstorm.

Some insurance companies are taking an alternate approach to this problem.  Their strategy is to have a different, much higher deductible for wind and hail claims while leaving the replacement protection for your roof intact.  Already we see some companies implementing a mandatory $2000 deductible on all home insurance policies for all claims related to wind or hail.  While I find this usually to be better for the consumer than restricting the roof valuation, it is still another bite out of the consumer’s pocket.

For the sake of the consumer, I would prefer that all policies have the same coverage language.  But with these changes, now a consumer must carefully watch his mail for notices regarding changes to his or her homeowners insurance policy.   If your roof is failry new then depreciated value may be better for you than a large wind and hail deductible.  However, if your roof has some age on it then you would be better served taking on a larger wind and hail deductible and keeping your replacement coverage on your roof.

At Clinard Insurance Group, we represent a number of insurance companies that have not changed either their deductible plan or the valuation for roof claims.  But, as the bigger insurance players in our market begin to make these changes, you can bet that those will smaller market share will take notice and start to make changes to their coverage language in their policies.  This makes it more important than ever that you stay in touch with your insurance agent and that you fully understand exactly how your policy will work in a wind or hail claim.  If you would like our help with your home insurance, your auto insurance, your business insurance or even your life insurance, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557.

Insurance Fraud Investigators Using Social Media To Catch The Crooks

There are many different kinds of insurance fraud scams, from the creative and complicated to the simple and childlike.  Insurance fraud in the United States costs insurers about $30 billion per year; more than 10% of all losses paid out by insurance companies.  I’ve mentioned this number to people in the past who have responded with a comment that the insurance companies can afford it so what is the big deal.  But they are forgetting that all costs are passed to the consumer eventually so these crooks are really stealing from them.  Just imagine, if we could get rid of insurance fraud completely, you could expect to pay 10% less for every kind of insurance policy that you buy from auto insurance and home insurance to business insurance and life insurance and health insurance.  How much would that 10% add up to in your case?

Before social media exploded into an integral part of so many peoples’ lives, solving insurance fraud claims had been a slow and difficult process.  But sites, like Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and others are providing a wealth of information and clues to investigators.  Here are a  few of these real world examples that show how these social media sites are helping investigators catch and stop some of the insurance fraud taking place today.

This first example is a case of fraud that didn’t include an insurance company, but it does prove how powerful these tools can be.  A woman worked in the payables department of a big corporation that had awarded a maintenance contract to a firm which was secretly run by her husband.    The maintenance firm was billing for services that were not actually performed and the wife was paying them on behalf of the corporation.  You can imagine that this kind of fraud is tough to detect and even harder to prove.    But the investigator cross referenced information from all of the social media sites with traditional sources such as the white pages and eventually found an address associated with the maintenance firm that matched an address of one of the couple’s grown children.    This allowed the investigator to connect the two and eventually to put an end to their fraud.

The one area of insurance that has perhaps benefited the most from these new tools is workers compensation insurance.  In one case, an injured worker, who was out of work on disability, posted photos of himself on top of a mountain in Aspen ready to ski down.  Another disabled worker left social media tracks that led to him playing basketball in an adult basketball league.   In this case,  the insurance company saves a lot of investigation money because instead of having to follow him around 24/7, the investigator needs only to attend the basketball game to witness him playing.   Or consider the case of a worker who was out on disability for a back injury who posted photos of himself at a karate class, thereby ending his disability workers compensation claim.

Social media is also quite good at revealing relationships between the different players in a scam.    A doctor and an attorney who were involved in a fraudulent insurance scheme together turned out to be connected on Linked In and it was later found that they were tweeting to each other to set up meetings to work out their next moves.  In another case, an investigator of a slip and fall claim, using social media sleuthing, discovered that two other people living in the same apartment with the victim were also victims of previous slip and fall claims.  In the end it was proven that only the first of these claims was legitimate and that the other two were fabricated.

Even Craigslist is a useful tool for the fraud investigator.  One fraudster filed an auto insurance claim for a stolen car.  A few months later he listed that same car for sale on Craigslist.    In another example, an individual filed a claim for his car that had been burned and investigators later found several earlier ads on Craigslist where this person had tried unsuccessfully to sell the car.  I guess he decided it would be easier to burn it and collect the insurance money.

All of these sleuthing techniques will help keep your insurance costs lower over the long term.   But if you don’t want to wait for these techniques to trickle down as savings to you, but would rather lower your insurance costs today, then you should call Clinard Insurance Group, toll free, at 877-687-7557 and let us help you find the policy that suits your needs at a rates that will bring a smile to your face.

Could Hurricane Sandy Cause Your Home Insurance Rates To Rise?

Hurricane Sandy  was a huge and vicious storm that dealt the northeastern US such a severe blow that the clean-up will probably continue for many more weeks and perhaps even months.  Luckily for those of us in North Carolina, Sandy dealt us mostly a glancing blow and for the most part we didn’t suffer huge property losses here.   Despite this though, hurricane Sandy will almost certainly contribute to higher future home insurance rates for you and your neighbors.

   

Property insurance rates for your homeowners insurance policy are promulgated from data gathered from many different sources from your credit score to the construction type of your home to the fire protection in your town.  Weather related past loss experience is also a huge player in this number crunching process.  And as far as weather related losses such as hurricanes go, there are really three ways that you can be affected negatively by these storms.  We can look at each of these three loss impact separately.

The first impact type is really very  simple and direct.  It’s pretty obvious that when your home or property suffers a direct loss from a storm and you have to file a claim that the insurance company is going to review your policy more closely before determining your rate at renewal.  Most insurance companies will allow you to file some number of weather related claims before they take the more drastic step of non-renewing your policy.  Many years ago, some companies might even allow as many as three weather related losses on one homeowners policy if they were all small.  Things have changed quite a bit in the past two years and some insurance companies now won’t tolerate even one weather related loss without at least requiring that you increase your deductible.  Many might just not renew your policy after one weather related loss.

A second, less obvious storm impact on your home insurance rates happens when a storm hits your local area.  Even though your home may be spared the damage, you may still face future rate increases due to this storm.  When insurance companies pay out for a lot of storm losses in one area, you can bet that they start to train their attention on that area and begin to work to get more rate increases there.  So, even when you have dodged the bullet of storm losses, you may not dodge the rate increase bullet caused by that local storm.

The third storm impact for rate increases comes from the fundamental mechanism of how insurance spreads losses around.  Consider that when you purchase home insurance you are substituting a smaller known loss (your premiums) for a larger unknown one (storm damages to your home).  The insurance companies do the same thing with their risks by purchasing reinsurance coverage for their book of policies.  Reinsurance is insurance protection that insurance companies purchase from reinsurance companies on all or some portion of their policies.  For example, an insurance company might sign a reinsurance contract with a reinsurer that says that if they suffer losses from any one storm that exceed $100 million then the reinsurer will pay for all claims over that amount.  Knowing this, you can quickly see that when large storms hit the US and cause extensive damage, the reinsurers have to pay out on their contracts with the insurance companies.  After this has happened, the future costs of reinsurance will be higher as the reinsurers attempt to cover past losses and also make sure that they are profitable going forward into the future.  These higher reinsurance costs are then passed on down to the homeowners insurance consumer.

So knowing all of this, let’s revisit hurricane Sandy.  For most of the North Carolina residents, this storm was a nonevent in terms of damage to their property.  But you can see, this still doesn’t mean that we won’t have to pay for some of these losses ourselves.  The third impact of storm losses tells us that we will see higher rates in our area even though we did not experience many direct losses as a result of this storm.

 At Clinard Insurance Group, we insure thousands of families all across North Carolina.  We are here to help you with your questions and to help you save money on your home insurance, your auto insurance, your life insurance and even your business insurance.    Please feel free to call us toll free, at 877-687-7557 if you have any questions about your personal or your business insurance.  We are here to help you.

HUD Rule Could Step On The Toes Of Homeowners Insurance Companies Meaning Higher Rates For You

Pity the North Carolina homeowners insurance marketplace.  The past year has been pretty rough.  The huge storm losses from 2011 have forced most insurance companies to dramatically raise their rates and limit which homes they are willing to insure.  Trying to buy insurance for your home without the support of your auto policy is rate suicide now.  And even with the auto insurance as support, many homeowners have had to sign the dreaded consent to rate form, giving their insurance companies the right to raise their home insurance rates far above the maximum rate allowed by the state.    And now, the home insurance marketplace faces another ratemaking hurdle – The new HUD rule and the unkown impact that it might have on the insurance industry’s underwriting practices.

This new HUD rule is called the disparate impact rule, and it would expand the Fair Housing Acts discriminatory effects standard and how it applies to actions that have discriminatory effects on minority groups.  Simply state, this new rule would hold companies responsible for policies that result in discriminatory effects on minorities whether or not there was ever any intention to discriminate against them as minorities.  What this could mean, is that home insurance rates might be held to be discriminatory and if so, then this could have enormous impacts on homeowners rates in North Carolina.

When it comes to pricing a homeowners insurance policy for your home, your insurance company will study many different factors that are individual to your specific house and you as the owner.   These factors can be as diverse as the quality of fire protection services are offered in your area to your credit score to your past claims history.   The very nature of insurance rate making is to isolate the high risk home from the lower risk ones in order to price each policy most appropriately.  By their very nature, many of these rate making tools could be seen to have a discriminatory effect on all kinds of different groups of people. All of these factors along with many others that are unique to the house itself as well as the life and attitudes of the home owner go into the process of determining a specific price for insurance for that home and that customer.  But what if the insurance company was unable to use some or all of this information to determine their rates for a home because their methodology could be seen as discriminatory against some particular minority?

  

A rule of this nature could limit the ability of insurance companies to provide more risk specific rates and this could result in an insurance marketplace with two flaws that will force upward pressure on pricing for all insurance buyers.  First of all, if we strip the insurance company’s ability to underwrite a specific location or area for risks that are unique to that location or area, then we will be forcing them to raise the rates on all other homes in order to subsidize those that deserve a  higher rate due to their higher risk factors.  The second flaw in this approach of insuring with more unknowns is that if you limit the information that an underwriter has to evaluate the risk of a home, then the underwriter will have to overestimate the risks, and thus the rate to cover this gap in knowledge about the home or its owner. In the end, this will mean that all homeowners will face higher rates.

At this point in time, we will have to wait for lawsuits to work their way through the system before we know for sure what impact this new rule will have on insurance companies and their home insurance rates.  Some feel that this rule could run afoul of the McCarran-Ferguson Act which gives states the power to regulate insurance.  Perhaps McCarran-Ferguson will protect the insurance companies and allow them to continue to discover the information that they need to create a fair rate for a specific home.   At this point we will have to wait and see what the higher courts rule as challenges to this new HUD rule wind their way through the court systems.

Clinard Insurance Group is an independent insurance agency located in Winston Salem, NC.  We insure thousands of homes all across North Carolina and it is important to us that all buyers of insurance products to be informed consumers.  If you have any questions about your home insurance, your auto insurance or your business insurance, please feel free to call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557.  We will take as much time as you need to help you understand the insurance products that buy.

Homeowners Insurance – Did You Make Any Of These Three Mistakes When You Purchased Yours?

If you purchased a home and got a mortgage with it, then chances are you have had experience buying homeowners insurance.   For the first time home buyer out there, buying homeowners insurance is just one of many distractions in the process that have to be checked off before the loan can close.  That kind of scenario makes a homeowner pretty vulnerable to focusing much more on the cost of the policy rather than the protection it provides.  Now if several years later you find the fire engines are racing toward your home while you stand in the driveway watching it burn, then you may suddenly find yourself wondering what you left off or ignored when you bought your policy.   Here’s a list of some of the most common mistakes that homeowners make when buying home insurance.

The most common mistake that I see is not purchasing enough insurance.  I know;  you are buying a home and in the process you start to feel like you are being nickelled and dimed all the way through.  But your insurance policy is one item where you should focus on protection first and price second.  It’s true that for the majority of homeowners, the insurance policy turns out to be nothing but a promise.  You are purchasing peace of mind and financial stability after a disaster but there is nothing tangible to take home and enjoy after you write the big check to the insurance company.   This is why I don’t blame folks for zeroing in on price as the primary factor in the purchasing decision.  But this is where you really need to take a bit of care and insure your home for full value.  It will be too late to call and ask for an increase as the sirens are wailing through your neighborhood.

 The problem of underinsurance is often exacerbated by the fact that you should be focusing on and insuring for the replacement value of your home.   You will have to build it back after all, and this can often exceed the price you just paid for the home.  For some people that is a difficult concept to understand.    Your agent should help walk you through the process of determining the replacement value of your home so that you can insure it for full value.  This won’t leave you with as much of a queasy feeling as those sirens are getting closer.

Homeowners also often make the mistake of failing to check to see if their home is in a flood zone area.  Flood losses are not covered by your homeowners insurance policy.    Could you easily absorb the costs of repairing flood damage that is equal to 1/3 of your home’s value?   Luckily, if you have a mortgage, then the bank will often catch this and require you to purchase a flood insurance policy.  I’ve also seen several cases where a bank wanted to require a flood insurance policy somewhat unnecessarily when the flood zone only crossed a small portion of a lower corner of the homeowner’s back yard.  If this happens to you, your agent can be very helpful in speaking with the bank to attempt to waive the flood insurance requirement.

The third most common mistake that homeowners make when purchasing their home insurance is failing to insure valuable items separately.     If you own valuable items like jewelry, paintings, musical instruments, guns or silverware, or other collectibles or fragile items, then you should consider adding coverage for these items under a separate endorsement.  Doing so can result in better protection since insurance coverage for these items may be severely limited under your homeowners policy.  If these things are important to you, take a few extra minutes and make your agent aware of them and discuss the best way to protect them.  Some homeowners policies will allow you to add a blanket endorsement for a low limit of coverage for these types of items.  This is a simple, quick and inexpensive way to protect these items if your collections are not extensive.

Clinard Insurance Group is located in Winston Salem, NC, and we insure thousands of homes all across the state.  We will take as much time as you need to listen to your story and to help you fashion a homeowners insurance policy that best suits your needs and your budget.   If you would like help with your homeowners insurance or your  auto insurance, your life insurance or even your business insurance, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557.

Flood Insurance – Will Your Policy Work For You When You Need It?

People in flood prone areas depend on their flood insurance policies to give them peace of mind and protection if the big one comes and they get flooded.  But very few of these buyers of flood insurance know that there is no guarantee their policy will be renewable when it expires?  Flood insurance is made affordable by a program is sponsored by the federal government.  The laws that created the National Flood Insurance Program and that allow this program to exist are currently tangled  up in other bills and debates that leave some doubt as to whether or not we will have a National Flood Insurance Program after May of this year.

You may be asking yourself why the federal government is mixed up in an insurance program in the first place.  Well, flood insurance is a different creature in the insurance world because with flood insurance, only those that need it most (those who live in flood prone areas) are the only ones who will ever consider buying a policy.  And since homeowners who have no flood risk at all (those who live at the top of a hill) will never want to buy a flood insurance policy, the insurance companies selling flood insurance will always face an adverse selection process when they sell flood policies.  This adverse selection process makes the cost of flood insurance nearly unaffordable as there is no subsidy at all from the lower risk buyers.  So the federal government steps in with a subsidy and the NFIP.

The NFIP must be continually reauthorized by Congress periodically as its charter expires.  The most recent extension for the NFIP was passed at the on Dec 23, 2011 but this extension only authorizes the program through May 31, 2012.  Without a further authorization of the program, the NFIP will cease to function after that day.   Now this kind of congressional deadline is nothing new, in fact the current extension is the 15^th one since 2002.  In 2010 the NFIP was allowed to lapse four different times, creating 53 days in 2010 when you could neither purchase a new flood insurance policy nor renew an existing one.   And I’d bet that most of the homeowners who lost coverage during that time were at best only dimly aware of the new risks they were taking on the day their policies became invalid.

There are several reasons why the NFIP reauthorization is getting this band aid type treatment.  And most of these reasons are unrelated to the NFIP itself.  The debt limit issues that the government ran into in late 2011 led to this current short term extension instead of a multi-year solution.  And the bill to extend the NFIP charter into 2016 is unfortunately tangled up with a few political hot potato items such as tax rates and the Medicare payments to doctors debate. 

Remember that your homeowners policy will not cover flood losses.  This is also true with your businessowners policy for your business.  In order to be protected, you will need to purchase a flood insurance policy.  If you have already bought a flood insurance policy, then you should  keep a close eye on your mail or stay in touch with your agent to make sure that your policy remains in force after May 31^st.  At this point there is no certainty that you will be protected on June 1^st.

At Clinard Insurance Group, situated in beautiful Winston Salem, NC, we can help you with your flood insurance needs.  We can also help you save money on your auto insurance, your home insurance and your business insurance.  Give us a call, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.  

NC Home Insurance Rates Poised To Go Up

If you live in NC , then you have many things to be happy about.  One is that your NC homeowners policy rates are among the lowest of any state in this part of the country.  And relatively speaking, they should remain that way.  But brace yourself, homeowners insurance rates in North Carolina, like most other states in the South and Southeast are poised to increase rather dramatically.  And to go along with these rate increases, the availability of homeowners insurance in NC is going down.

In most cases, insurance companies who sell auto insurance and home insurance in North Carolina, also do the same business in many other states all across the country.  So bad loss years in one state for an insurance company can be balanced out by profits made in other states for that year  In 2011 though,  this formula did not work out well for most insurance companies as 2011 was a year of storms and weather related losses all across the country.  Now, insurance numbers are notoriously slow in being published (what do you think that says about the speed of their claims service?) so we don’t have all the numbers in at this time.  Still, with my ear to the ground and hearing what the company people are saying, it is an easy call to say that insurance rates for homes in North Carolina will almost certainly be increasing in 2012 for almost everyone.  And for those with more risky situations or poor loss history, these changes might even mean it is hard for them to buy insurance for their home at any price.

The numbers aren’t all in yet, but the insurance industry has suffered 4 straight years of record losses in the area of home insurance.  The losses have to be recovered somewhere and you know the most direct way to do so will be to increase the rates that you pay for your home insurance.  Take a look at some numbers that indicate the trends that the insurance industry has been fighting against for the past 4 years.  The average cost for a homeowners policy in the United States in 2008 was $791.  In 2009 that number climbed to $799 and in 2010 it went to $807.  The 2011 number is estimated jump to about $840.  For 2012 we can expect a national increase of about 5%.  But that doesn’t tell the whole story for those of us who own homes in NC.  Here we had heavy hail losses last Spring, and that combined with the underfunded beach plan and the risks of beach plan assessments on NC insurance companies, means that you can probably expect rate increases of more than 5% as well as an increasingly tighter market for homeowners insurance in our lovely state.

It is already game on for some insurance companies who are starting to place limits on the number of homes they will insure in 2012.  Many insurance companies are now requiring that you buy your auto insurance from them or they will not insure your home.  Others have even stopped writing new homeowners insurance policies.  There are a few companies that are actively reducing the number of homeowners policies that they sell in NC by non-renewing policies in their book of business.

So what does this mean for you and what should you do to protect yourself and your home from this troubled insurance environment?  First of all, I would suggest that you use an independent agent to help you procure your home and your auto insurance policies.  If you are buying your insurance from a  direct writing company such as a State Farm, Nationwide, Allstate or Geico, remember that if your insurance company takes drastic action towards NC and home insurance, then your agent will probably not have an alternative solution for you.  This could leave you scrambling for coverage in tight marketplace.  Also, you should always keep your home and auto insurance insured with the same insurance company.  This will save you money of course but it will make you a more important client to that insurance company.  If your insurance company starts taking  action to reduce their homeowners exposure in NC, then your account is less likely to be affected.

At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we insure thousands of homes and thousands of cars all across North Carolina and South Carolina.  We are an independent agent and we have many insurance companies that still have a good appetite to write home insurance in NC.  If you would like the personal help and attention of one of our trusted agents, please call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.  We will take as much time as you want and need to be sure that you are buying exactly the protection that you want for the lowest possible cost to you.

Volunteer Wrongful Acts Insurance Coverage – Should You Add This To Your Homeowners Insurance Policy?

America is a land of volunteers.   Almost everyone you know has volunteered somewhere at some point in his or her life and many people have regular work as volunteers each week.  But have you ever considered that your volunteer work could  get you into financial  trouble?  There are several areas of liability that can arise from volunteering from acts as a director or officer of a non-profit all the way down to minor clerical errors that could lead to personal liability risks for the volunteer.  Here I discusses a relatively new insurance coverage form that can be added to some homeowners insurance policies called volunteer wrongful acts insurance coverage.

Let’s start with a definition.  What is a wrongful act as defined by the volunteer wrongful acts coverage endorsement?  The endorsement defines this term as an actual or alleged error, misleading statement, act or omission, neglect or breach of duty committed by any insured during the policy period in the insured’s capacity as a volunteer.  If we break that definition down we see that the act must have occurred as the result of your volunteer work and that it can be either an alleged or an actual error.  It could even  be an omission or simply a breach of your duty as a volunteer.

I think an example is a good way to understand this risk and the insurance protection we are discussing.  Assume that you are a treasurer for a local nonprofit and you make an honest error in calculations that indicates that the nonprofit has more money to spend on a project than they actually have in the bank.  The project is approved based on your numbers and contracts are signed and the project gets underway.  Soon it is discovered that your error is going to generate huge expenses for your nonprofit due to the contracts that were signed for the project.  Suddenly you find yourself on the wrong side of a lawsuit with your nonprofit for the cost of these damages.  If you had added volunteer wrongful acts coverage to your homeowners insurance policy, then you would have protection for this loss. 

If this sounds like a coverage that you need, then you should contact your insurance agent and have them add it to your homeowners insurance policy.  Be sure that you understand the limits of coverage that can be provided.  Not every insurance company will allow this endorsement to be added to the policy and most will have limitations on how much protection you can buy.   So even though you may have a $300,000 personal liability limit on your homeowners insurance, this endorsement may limit you protection to $50,000 or perhaps $100,000.   You should also ask if your umbrella insurance policy will pick up coverage where this endorsement leaves off.  In most cases I have found that it will not do so.

Volunteering is a wonderful act of generosity and we should all encourage this kind of behavior as much as possible.  Unfortunately the law can still put you in a vulnerable position when you volunteer so you need to make sure that you have the protection you need to make sure that you are just giving your time and not your personal assets. At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC we can help you add this protection to your homeowners insurance policy.  Please call us toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at www.ClinardInsurance.com.   

Facebook And Your Personal Insurance Policies – Is There A Connection?

Most of us would agree that what you say and do on Facebook should have no effect on your insurance policies or your rates.   But the truth is more complicated.  Your Facebook actions can have an effect on your insurance rates and coverages in some circumstances.  And my guess is that the impact will only grow over time.

I want to begin by assuring you that as of this moment, I am not aware of an insurance company that using Facebook as an underwriting tool for personal insurance policies such as home insurance and auto insurance.  There may come a time when they automate that process and if so, will begin to use it if they can.    Insurance for businesses though is a very different scenario.  Businesses want to attract people to their FB pages and so their Facebook information is easy for anyone to see.   Commercial insurance underwriters will routinely study a business Facebook page to be sure that they are comfortable insuring that enterprise.  Here is a list of some of the things you want to consider vis-à-vis your personal insurance and your safety on Facebook.

Start by understanding that Facebook data is a rich source of opportunity for crooks and thieves.   Once again, one bad apple spoils everyone else’s fun.  But you can still have a great time but not give up the information so easily.  The thieves are out there looking for the easy targets.  So here are some ideas to help keep you from being the low hanging fruit for the bad people out there who are looking for ways to steal from you. 

You should start with a very strong password.   Obviously you don’t want to share that password with anyone.   The strong password will help prevent a thief from guessing your password based on the information that can be publicly obtained.  Also, while it is ok to show your birthday, don’t show the year you were born.  That is just an invitation for identity thieves to go to work on you. 

Take the time to understand just how the privacy controls work  and try and limit as much access about yourself to just your friends.  Restrict access to photos, birth date, family information and religious views.  Remember, the more pieces of the puzzle you give out, the easier it is for a crook to steal from you.  It is also a bad idea to post your children’s names in photos as tags.  If someone else does this, you should ask them to delete the tag.    Your children are the weakest link in the information protection game and letting a thief link your information to theirs just makes their job all the easier.

This next reminder should be obvious but people break this rule all of the time.  Don’t post the dates you will be out of town.  If you must share the pics from your recent trip, just wait until you get home to share them.  If you are talking about a future trip online, be as vague as possible about the actual dates you will be gone.

Right now, my experience tells me that the things you say and share on your personal Facebook page are not a threat to your home insurance rates or your auto insurance rates.   I hear rumors out there, which I cannot confirm, that some life insurance companies may be trying to track applicants on Facebook to help decide, based on lifestyle choices, which applicants should get the preferred rates and which should be charged more.  However, at this point in time, I think the biggest threat to you at this comes from theives.  Please use good common sense with your Facebook account.

Clinard Insurance Group is an independent insurance agency located in Winston Salem, NC.  We try very hard to pull back the curtain on the insurance industry so that you can be an informed insurance buyer.  If we can help you with your home insurance, your life insurance, your auto insurance of even your business insurance needs, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557.

Does Your Credit Score Match Your Insurance Company’s Appetite?

There is an awful lot of talk these days about credit scores. You see the ads with the people walking around with a number over their head, indicating their particular credit score. While these ads really have more to do with borrowing money or protecting your credit, a little known fact is that these scores also have a huge impact on your auto insurance policy rates and your home insurance rates.

Now, to clarify, most insurance companies don’t work straight off of your credit score, but rather a more complicated formula that is called your insurance score. They pool data that includes but is not limited to your credit score from database companies like Experian and Equifax. And your insurance score can actually vary from company to company. Add to this the fact that your rates are directly affected by your credit score. Insurance companies now have so many different rating tiers that it is almost as if they have a specific rate for you that is different from the rate that any other customer might receive.

So why is this important? I was recently at an annual meeting for a very large insurance company that specializes in auto insurance and home insurance. One of the graphs that came up on the overhead showed the percentage of policies that they wrote in many different insurance score bands. I guess that is no real surprise, but then they showed which bands of insurance score they wanted to grow in next year. And guess what, it wasn’t the highest score band. Now what that should tell you is that most insurance companies are not just trying to write all the policies they can, far from it. In fact, they are trying to write policies for people who fit their niche in the insurance score universe.

So this got me thinking. If every insurance company has a sweet spot in terms of insurance score, and almost every insurance buyer has his or her own unique insurance score, how in the world can the two match up so that the insurance company gets just the consumer that it is targeting and of course the consumer, by being in that company’s sweet spot, gets the best possible rate? There is no place where people can go and have their insurance score run and then plug those numbers into a data base that sorts them to the best insurance company. So, at best, this is an inexact science. But it does underscore the need for you to have an experienced advocate working for you in the process of buying your auto or your home insurance. And if you use an independent agent, then their access to and experience with the multiple insurance companies that they represent will give you a huge edge over the direct writers who only have access to one insurance company. So, who are the direct writers who are not independent? Well, they will be names that you recognize, State Farm, Allstate, Nationwide, Progressive and Geico. These companies spend a lot of money on TV talking about saving money and low prices, all designed to steer the conversation away from their weak point, the fact that they have only their one product to offer you and thus they minimize your chances of making a good match between your insurance score and your insurance company.

At Clinard Insurance Group, Inc, in Winston Salem, NC, we want insurance consumers to be informed consumers, whether or not they choose to buy from us. We believe the independent agent gives you the best possible chance to purchase the most coverage at the lowest price consistently over the long term. If we can help you with your NC auto insurance or your home insurance, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557, or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

You can read source information for this article among other articles at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Clinard Insurance Group Named Rough Notes E-agency Of The Month February 2011

In this blog, I usually try to focus on insurance policy and coverage help that will allow insurance consumers out there to become more informed buyers of the insurance product they need. In this article, I want to deviate from that tack just a bit and take a moment to sing the praises of Clinard Insurance Group in particular.

The occasion for this change in approach on this blog is that Clinard Insurance Group, an independent insurance agency in Winston Salem, NC has been named the e-Agency of the month by Rough Notes magazine. Rough Notes is a national insurance industry magazine with over 40,000 subscribers. So this is a big honor and we want to let all of our readers know about it.

The Rough Notes article focuses on our digital marketing efforts in particular but does give a lot of other information about our agency and our more traditional marketing methods as well. This is an important marker for those of you out there considering an agent for your business insurance. The reason this is so, is that we take our digital and traditional marketing expertise and we use it help our business insurance clients grow their businesses as well. We understand that if your business grows, then so does ours. One of the ways you can see us working hard for our clients is through our partners page that is a place where our business clients can offer coupons to the online world to help increase their client base.

If you would like to read the rough notes article and see photos of some of the people behind the scenes at Clinard Insurance Group, just click here. I hope you enjoy this inside look at our agency.

At Clinard Insurance Group we want all insurance consumers to be informed buyers. We work hard to try and disseminate information to the public about insurance issues that affect their lives and their businesses. If we can help you with your home insurance, your auto insurance, your life insurance or business insurance, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com. Also, keep in mind that we also specialize in used car dealer insurance, auto repair and body shop insurance, restaurant insurance, and insurance for small contractors and landscaping companies.

The source information for this article was originally posted to a blog at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com and you can find the full version at that site.

I’ve Been Robbed – Now What Do I Do?

For most people, their home is their sanctuary. According to the Department of Justice, about 9.5% of homes in the US are broken into by thieves each year. Discovering that a thief has broken in and stolen from you can be very upsetting. Most people make the first call to the police. The second call should be to your insurance agent. This blog will discuss what you the claims process on your homeowners insurance should be like after a theft claim.

When you call your agent to file the claim, they may transfer you to the company claims department or they may take the claim information directly for you. Either way should be fine, we give our customers the choice. Generally speaking, if a company has a claim number that you can call, then your claim should proceed a bit faster as the agent will simply have to turn around and file the claim by fax, email or some other electronic system to the company claims department.

Here is a list of the information that your agent or claims processor will need from you.

· When did the loss occur?

· How did the thieves get into your home?

· Is your home currently secured?

· If not, what are you doing to secure the home now?

· What items were stolen?

· What authority or police department did you contact and have they made a report?

· What is the police report number?

· Did the police come out to the scene?

· What phone numbers are best for the company to contact you?

Ok, so what should you expect next? Well, you should expect that a claims adjuster will come out to your home and inspect the premises to better understand the claim. This is normal and your cooperation here will speed up the process. Also, the adjuster will want to take a recorded statement from you. This too is normal and to be expected as the claims adjuster needs to have a complete understanding, from your point of view, about exactly what happened at your home.

The insurance adjuster, and very often the police department, will require that you complete an inventory of the personal property that was stolen. This may seem difficult to do and you may need to amend this list as time goes on and you discover more items that are missing. One thing you can do in now, before you have a loss, is walk around your home with a video camera, opening cabinet doors and drawers and talking to the camera describing the property and when you got it and what you may have paid for it. This video can be very helpful later for remembering what you had so that you can better determine what might be missing.

Most homeowner policies have an endorsement providing replacement cost protection for the personal property that is covered. People are often surprised to learn that in most states this endorsement to the policy will not pay the replacement value unless and until you have actually replaced the item. Until you replace the item, the company will only pay the actual cash value which is determined by subtracting the depreciation for the age of the item from the replacement cost of the item. Knowing in advance how the replacement cost provision works for your personal property on your homeowners insurance can help you plan ahead.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we want all insurance consumers to be informed buyers. If we can help you with your auto insurance, your home insurance or your life insurance or retirement planning, please feel free to call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

Safety Tip - How To Extinguish a Grease Fire In Your Kitchen

As an insurance agent working directly with customers to help them with their home insurance and auto insurance, I see lots of accidents that turn into insurance claims. The most common type of kitchen fire that I see in this business is the fire that is started by grease catching on fire in a pan on the stove. The danger of this kind of fire is often exacerbated by the way people attempt to put it out. This blog will show you a safety tip that you should share with all of your friends and relatives. This knowledge could save a life or at the very least, might save a kitchen or a home from total destruction.

Grease fires are a special type of problem. And the ways in which you approach this fire can make the difference between a small isolated event in your kitchen and the loss of your home and your personal possessions. If you throw water onto a grease fire, the water, which is heavier than the oil, will sink to the bottom, then become superheated and the steam will push its way up and out of the pan. The force of this kind of explosion can be quite stunning and worst of all, this explosion will smear burning oil all over the kitchen from the ceiling to the walls. After this has happened, the best course of action would be to get out of the house and call the fire department.

Often people unknowingly spread misinformation about how to put out a grease fire. These include throwing flour or sugar on a grease fire in a pan. Both of these are very dangerous strategies, in fact it is estimated that throwing one cup of flour or sugar on a burning grease fire in a pan can create an explosion with the force of up to two sticks of dynamite.

Fortunately, there is a simple and low tech solution for putting out this type of fire.

Step 1 – Turn off the heat on the burner.

Step 2 – Rinse a dish towel fully in water and then wring it out.

Step 3 – Carefully place the wet dishtowel over the burning pan of grease and wait for it to cool down.

I have found a short video on youtube that you can watch to see a demonstration of this technique. Please take 30 seconds to watch this short video and then teach this to your children and those you love. This knowledge could save the life of someone you love. To see this 30 second video, please click here.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we want all insurance consumers to be informed buyers. But beyond that, we want people to have the safety knowledge that can save lives in an emergency situation. If we can help you with your auto insurance, your home insurance, or your business insurance or life insurance, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

Source data for this article was pulled from other articles which can be found online by visiting www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Replacement Cost Protection - Is It Missing In Your Insurance Policies?

Almost any type of insurance policy that you purchase that has a property insurance element will either include or exclude replacement cost coverage. This article helps you understand what it is and isn’t and where you may want to double check to be sure it is there for you when you need it.

Let’s start with a definition of replacement cost coverage. This is essentially a valuation clause that determines how your lost or damaged property will be covered under your insurance policy. The common choices are either replacement cost or actual cash value. There is also a functional replacement cost coverage but it is rarely used. For more information about functional replacement cost, please click here. Replacement cost is usually defined as the cost to replace the lost or destroyed item with a new one of like value and construction. For example, if lightning ran in on your 45 inch flat screen television, and you had replacement cost coverage on the contents on your homeowners insurance policy, then the replacement value would be what it would cost to purchase a brand new 45 inch flat screen TV. When policies don’t carry replacement cost protection, then the claim is usually settled using the actual cash value of the damaged or lost item. Actual cash value is usually defined as the replacement cost of the item minus any depreciation based on the age and past use of that item.

It is important that you take the time to review your insurance policies that include coverage for property to determine if you have bought replacement cost coverage or actual cash value (ACV) coverage. The difference in the size of the claim check that you will receive after a loss can vary a great deal, depending on which of these you chose. Most homeowners policies provide replacement cost coverage on your home automatically and allow you to choose RC or ACV coverage on your contents. There may be an additional charge for the RC coverage. Business property insurance policies rarely charge extra for replacement coverage, you just need to be sure that you are carrying high enough insurance limits to avoid any coinsurance penalties that might result from your policy form.

One oddball policy when it comes to RC versus ACV coverage is the auto insurance policy. If you carry collision coverage on your auto insurance, then you might have an opportunity to purchase replacement cost coverage on your newer vehicles. This form often allows you to replace your old, totaled vehicle with a brand new one even if the wrecked car is up to 5 years old. For more information about replacement cost coverage on the personal auto insurance policy, read my blog on that topic by clicking here.

If you are unsure about where you do and don’t have replacement cost coverage on your insurance policies, please take a moment and pick up the phone and call your agent. This could make a huge difference in the amount you might receive after a large loss and it is always easier if your expectations more nearly match what will really happen if and when you have a large property claim.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we strive to help all insurance buyers become more informed consumers. If we can help you with your auto insurance, your home insurance, your business insurance or even your life insurance, please feel free to call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

You can find the source article for this document at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

NC Negligence Laws May Change And The Result Will Be Higher Car Insurance Rates

The NC House is now considering a tort reform bill that could dramatically increase the amount you spend on your auto insurance policy as well as on your home insurance policy and business insurance policies. The reason this bill is so bad for your insurance rates is that it aims to change our current law of contributory negligence to one of comparative fault.

So what does this mean? Well, with our current laws, if you contribute in any way to the accident that causes damages, then you cannot recover these damages from the other party. Comparative fault permits a plaintiff to recover from a defendant if his negligence does not exceed that of the defendant. Now, if we adopt comparative negligence as our state law, then as you can imagine, more claims are going to have to be handled by the court systems because now we have to determine who had the most fault in any accident or event as opposed to saying both parties were somewhat at fault so everyone settles their own claim with their own insurance company. And as you can imagine, having all of these claims settled by our court system will slow down the claims and increase the costs of the claims. And you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that those costs are going to be passed down to the consumer.

Here are some of the findings by the IFNC (Insurance Federation of NC) regarding this bill.

It is estimated that this change in the law will increase auto insurance premiums by 3% to 16% right away. The long term increases in costs could dwarf these numbers.

81% of voters surveyed said that they are opposed to any legislation that increases their taxes or their household expenses.

69% of those polled said the trial attorneys would benefit if the law were changed.

$150 million annually will come out of consumers’ pockets if rates rise just 5% on auto insurance alone. But this change will increase the costs of all policies that have a liability insurance element. This includes homeowners insurance and business insurance policies.

A substantial majority of voters believe that under our current system our courts are open and fair for those who have been hurt in an accident or injured on the job.

Actuarial studies show that states with comparative fault systems have higher auto insurance rates than state that use contributory negligence.

Let’s face it, there are two industries that will make more money of this change goes through. One is trial attorneys and the other is insurance agents. That’s right, I would personally stand to gain from this decision but I still think it is the wrong decision and I urge you to take action to stop it. The appropriate step for you to take to oppose this legislation is to write to your State Senator and ask him or her to vote NO on House Bill 813. For more information or sample letters to send or email to your State Senator, visit Home | Insurance Federation of North Carolina.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we want all of our clients to be informed insurance consumers. We want you to have the information you need to make wise decisions about how to protect your assets. If we can help you with your auto insurance, your home insurance, or even your business insurance or your life insurance, please call us toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on line at ClinardInsurance.com.

The source information for this article was drawn from information which can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Your Homeowners Insurance Policy and Hail Damage To Your Roof – A Warning

It’s Spring here in beautiful North Carolina and with the flowers comes the sudden and violent thunderstorms that produce hail. This hail has the potential to damage your roof. The hail also creates an opportunity for unscrupulous companies to try and take advantage of you. This blog will put you on notice to their tricks and tell you how to avoid their scam.

If you have a standard homeowners policy in NC, then you will have protection for your losses if your roof is damaged by hail. These claims rarely run into any difficulties and we process them quite frequently this time of year. But lately, we have been warned by our company claims departments that there are some scammers out there creating a bit of misery for homeowners in our area.

Here’s how they operate. After a hail storm, these roofing contractors will visit your home and offer to inspect your roof for hail damage from the recent storm. They always find that your roof has been damaged and needs to be replaced. If there was no damage to begin with, they manufacture some evidence to convince you. Next they assure you that your loss is covered by your home insurance policy and they tell you that they work with your insurance company already and can go ahead and get started right away. This is important they say because water could enter your home during the next storm and then your damages are really going to sky rocket. In order to get you started right away, they have you sign a contract which obligates you to pay for their work. You can bet that their rates are much higher than the market will usually bear but they convince you to ignore pricing because the insurance company will pay for it anyway.

The problems that this causes for homeowners are twofold. First of all, in many cases, there is no real damage to the roof and when the insurance company gets out there to inspect the claim, they find that there is no hail damage and thus no protection from the homeowners insurance policy. This leaves the homeowner stuck with the bill to replace a roof that didn’t need replacement. The other problem is that even if there is damage and the roof did need replacing, the insurance company may not agree to pay for roofing rates that are above the market rates and this leaves the homeowner holding the bag on the balance of the contract costs.

So how do your protect yourself? It’s easy really. Just don’t sign any contracts for roofing repairs until you have filed the claim with your insurance company and an adjuster has been on your roof and inspected the damages and discussed them with you. Don’t rush into a contract with the roofing company that knocked on your door. Have a patient, careful discussion with the claims adjuster before you commit to anything.

At Clinard Insurance Group in Winston Salem, NC, we work hard to help all of our clients become informed and knowledgeable insurance consumers. If we can help you with your home insurance, your auto insurance, your business insurance or your life insurance needs, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

The source information for this article can be found at www.insuranceanswerguy.com.

NC Homeowners Insurance Policy – Sewer Backup Insurance Is Changing

Many North Carolina homeowners will be losing coverage on their homeowners insurance policy over the next few months. Most won’t bother to read the fine print in their renewals so they won’t even know what they lost. Hopefully, for those of you astute enough to follow this blog, this won’t be the case.

What has changed in NC regarding the homeowners insurance policy is that the coverage for backup of water or sewer, which is an add on endorsement that you can purchase, is going to have new limits on how much will be paid out in the event of a claim. Let me start by saying that this coverage is not included in your home insurance policy unless you add it by endorsement. Some people don’t need this endorsement at all, and others absolutely should not be without it. To learn more about the sewer backup endorsement and who needs to buy it, please read my blog about back of sewers and drains coverage.

If you have this endorsement on your policy, then in the past this protection had the same limit of coverage as your home itself. So, for instance if you have $200,000 coverage on your dwelling, then with this sewer back up endorsement, then you would have $200,000 coverage for this type of loss. For all renewals with an effective date of June 1 2010 or later, this changes. Now instead you must choose a limit of coverage. The available limits are $5000, $10,000, $15,000, and $25,000. Probably in most cases one of these limits will be high enough to pay off the loss but there is really no way to know before the claim happens. It’s also fair to note that the cost of this protection is going up on a per dollar basis. That’s because where you used to have the same limit of coverage as your dwelling for around $25 per year cost, now that same $25 will probably buy you between $5,000 and $10,000 of protection, depending on which company you are insured with.

I urge everyone to read the letter that will come with your next renewal if you have this endorsement. Every company will handle this change differently but by and large, most of them will move your protection down to the $5000 coverage level. This is fine if you are confident that this is enough coverage to handle any claims you may have. But if not, then you will need to be proactive and contact your agent and ask for a higher limit.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we work hard to help all of our clients become informed insurance consumers. Whether you are looking for auto insurance, home insurance, life insurance or business insurance, please feel free to contact us for help and advice. You can call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

Much of the source information for this article can be found at our blog website which is www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.