There are plenty of reasons one might want to check their home insurance claims history. Perhaps you want to check for fraud or want to get an understanding of why your premiums are what they are. Luckily, checking your home insurance claim history can be quite straightforward. While the specific process may vary among different insurance providers, the general process will involve reaching out to your insurance over the phone or through the internet and requesting records from them.
This is just one way to gather information about past home insurance claims – an alternative method involves seeking out a CLUE report. CLUE reports are created by a consumer reporting agency, and are utilized by prospective insurers when calculating the premiums for specific insurance policies. This makes CLUE reports useful when trying to understand why you have particular insurance premiums, or why an insurance company might have refused to give you a policy.
Check Home Insurance Claims History to Better Understand Your Insurance
There is no shortage of reasons why one would want to check their home insurance claims history. It is essential for investigating any changes that your insurance may make to their premiums. In fact, claims history is often a significant factor when your insurance is trying to determine premiums, though it isn’t always the main factor. Given the nature of insurance companies, it occasionally happens that a mistake is made, either a claim is entered with incorrect details or even fraudulent claims.
The process for checking claims with your insurance is fairly straightforward. Most insurance companies will have a number you can call, and from there you can request a copy of claims that have been made with the insurance. In our modern age, you will find that many insurance companies have systems in place to check claims online. This allows you not only to view past claims but to see the status of current claims as well.
The specifics will vary between different insurance companies, but nowadays there are plenty of ways to check your home insurance claims history. Check in with your home insurance company’s website for more specific steps on how to check your claims history.
For More Detailed Information Examine Your Clue Report
CLUE, or Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, is a database run by data and analytics company Lexis Nexis Risk Solutions for the purpose of compiling and documenting information relevant to credit risk. They tend to collect this information on a per-property basis, and are used by your homeowners insurance when calculating premiums, or whether or not to continue an insurance contract.
CLUE reports contain all kinds of information, including your name, address, the name of your insurance company, and the type of policy you have, as well as a report number. Most relevant to the topic, it will contain details about claims related to the property – including the type of loss of each claim as well as the date and cost of the claim itself. It will even indicate the status of a claim, such as whether or not the claim has been closed, or is pending.
Under federal law at the time of this writing, you are entitled to one free CLUE report per year, which will allow you to assess the different claims on record. It is good homeowner insurance hygiene to check out this free report and make sure that there are no mistakes or other funny business going on with your records. Your CLUE report will also provide information on disputing errors. This is important, since CLUE reports are utilized by your insurance, and mistakes can impact what sorts of decisions they make.
It Is Important to Occasionally Check Your Home Insurance Claim History to Prevent Mistakes
Regardless of whether or not you’ve recently dealt with a claim, it isn’t a bad idea to occasionally check your home insurance claim history, especially if you notice a change in your insurance premiums. While it can be hard to trace specific changes of insurance details to specific prior claims, changes can be a sign of incorrect data. Utilizing your free yearly CLUE report, you can verify that listed claims are indeed correct. Making this a yearly routine can ensure that you keep your premiums as low as possible.
