- Great ratings from financial reviewers.
- Less-than-average score on the NAIC Complaint Index.
- Pre-dominantly positive reviews from the policyholders.
- Many report affordable premiums.
- Partners with a number of local news channels to provide the Alfa Camera Network. This provides early warning for their consumers about severe weather conditions.
- Only available in 11 states.
- No online quote tool.
Alfa has been in the business of protecting people and their property for over 70 years. Alfa’s legacy began in the mid-1940s as primarily a farm insurer for members of the Alabama Farmer’s Federation.
Now, Alfa serves thousands of homeowners in its hometown. Alfa and its affiliates provide insurance in 11 states with core operations in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Alfa is also available in Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
It’s not enough for Alfa to serve just homeowners in these areas. Alfa also offers auto, life, farm, business, health, and dental insurance. Alfa will even insure your church, watercraft, and more. Today, they have over 700,000 policies in place across their hundreds of private service centers.
As a business centered on community and an excellent claims experience, we wanted to check them out. We looked at all the reviews, complaints, pros, and cons of Alfa home insurance. Keep reading to see if Alfa holds up to its promises, and what kind of rates you can expect if you decide to make the switch.
Alfa homeowners insurance coverages & premiums
Alfa offers the standard types of coverage you’d see from a typical home insurance company. This includes:
- Dwelling Protection: This covers damage to your home and attached structures after a covered loss. If your home and/or attached shed is damaged by a covered peril, Alfa pays the replacement cost.
- Other Structures: This coverage is for stand-alone structures on your property. If your fence or other outlying structure is damaged by a covered peril, Alfa will take care of a percentage of the costs.
- Personal Property: This includes coverage for your belongings, like furniture and clothes. This coverage will repair or replace stolen or damaged items up to your policy limits.
- Personal Liability: This can help protect your money if you’re held responsible for an injury or damage to someone’s personal property due to a covered loss.
- Loss Of Use: This coverage will reimburse the excess cash you spend on temporary relocation if your property becomes unlivable due to a covered loss.
Alfa’s optional coverages include:
- Scheduled Personal Property: When some of your items prove to be too luxurious to keep within the confines of your personal property limits, scheduling them can help. Adding a scheduled personal property endorsement to your policy will extend the coverage of certain items to guarantee they can be covered in total.
- Home Systems Protection: This type of coverage kind of mocks other insurers’ equipment breakdown coverage. Home Systems Protection covers up to $100,000 worth of repairs or replacements of various systems in your home in the event of a covered peril. The equipment should be up to 14 years of age for $100,000 worth of protection. Otherwise, they will only be covered for up to $2,000 for a $500 deductible. These systems include:
- Hot water heaters
- Air and heat systems
- Geothermal or solar installations
- Pool and hot tub equipment
- Elevators and lift chairs
- Control panels
- Well pumps
- Computers, tablets, smartphones,
- And more!
- Personal Property Replacement Cost: You get the option to have your personal property covered for its replacement cost. This is opposed to actual cash value, which counts the matters of depreciation and might not allow for the total repair or replacement of your personal items.
- Home Sharing: This coverage will protect your home and property when others are living in your home. For example, let’s say you advertise your home as a short-term rental, and a house fire occurs due to lightning. Alfa will pay for the damages to your home, regardless of if you’re the current tenant.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any online pricing tools on Alfa’s website. This prevents us from getting a true quote for home insurance. We did find a lot of reviews stating that their premiums are reasonable and in many cases, homeowners saved money with Alfa compared to their previous insurer.
As always, your total yearly premium will be based on the size of your home, the age of your roof, your location, and several other factors. The South is, unfortunately, riddled with raising premiums due to hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and fraud. With Alfa, you’ll have to call an agent to get down to the bottom of those true numbers.
Alfa home insurance discounts
In case you live in a place where home insurance is steadily rising, Alfa offers a couple of discounts that could save you some money. Some of these include:
- Relationship Discount: When you have more than one policy open, you can bundle them to get the best price.
- Legacy Discount: This discount is available for loyal customers. It could even extend to your children when they decide to rent or own a home under an Alfa policy.
- Safety Systems Discount: Having burglar and fire alarms, fire extinguishers, and deadbolt locks may provide you with additional discounts on your premium.
- Windstorm Protection Discount: In certain states, you could get premium discounts for having wind-resistant features installed on your home. These could be storm shutters, sturdier structures, etc. Eligibility varies between states, so it helps to pay attention to statutes regarding Alabama and Mississippi’s laws.
Alfa homeowners insurance claims process
Alfa breaks its claims process down into 4 steps:
- File a claim, either through their website, your MyAlfa account, or by calling 800-964-2532. This is when you provide the date, address, and details of the incident.
- A claims professional reviews the documents and confirms the extent of the damage.
- Your policy is reviewed to determine what is covered and what the estimates are.
- Alfa will contact you about payment once the paperwork and review are completed.
According to the NAIC, of the small number of complaints received by customers, claims handling was the top reason. More specifically, complaints were driven towards Alfa’s delays and other state-specific reasons, like the weather.
What customers have to say
Although Alfa is not considered an accredited company by the BBB, they’ve still received an A+ rating. Surprisingly, there are no customer complaints or reviews left for Alta here.
We say this is a surprise, but then after checking the NAIC, their homeowner’s insurance complaints are set at a score of .31. Considering the Complaint Index is always set at 1, this means Alfa gets fewer complaints than your average company.
If you read all the reviews across the web, there are some who left complaints. Some customers report rude or otherwise unfriendly service, even towards veterans and first responders. Evidence of this might come from certain reviews from customers on other sites.
Overall, there are a lot more positive reviews online which actually praise Alfa for being easier to work with. Even a person living on the Gulf Coast, prone to hurricanes, says their experience couldn’t be better and their prices couldn’t be cheaper.
As always, we take customer reviews with a grain of salt. If it’s any consolation, however, there are many more positive customer reviews than negative ones.
Alfa’s financial strength
As we mentioned earlier, Alfa is not yet backed by the BBB. They are, however, greatly endorsed by a couple of other financial ratings companies.
Since 2022, AM Best has provided Alfa with a solid rating of “A” regarding financial strength and long-term issuer credit. This means, according to them, Alfa displays an excellent ability to meet ongoing insurance obligations.
Weiss Ratings gives Alfa a B+ as their Insurance Safety Rating. This means that they believe Alfa is in the upper third of companies that offer good financial security and have the resources to deal with a variety of adverse economic conditions. They believe Alfa comfortably exceeds the minimum levels for all of their rating criteria and is likely to remain healthy for the near future.
All other subsidiaries of Alfa hover around the “B” rating range as well. This excludes Alfa Life insurance, which currently has a rating of C+.
Final thoughts
Alfa is another home insurance company claiming to be devoted to its customers. As a long-time insurer, Alfa has a litany of loyal, happy customers.
It seems financial companies agree with the consensus of Alfa’s people. Save for the BBB, many high ratings are provided for Alfa. This is due to their longevity in the business, and their ability to show the industry just how it’s done.
Lest we forget the meat of this review. Alfa provides basic home coverage with a couple of discounts available. We aren’t able to get a quick quote online, but based on the online reviews, many homeowners are happy with the rates they are paying with Alfa.
