The Washington Insurance Team Homeowner's Insurance 101

The Washington Insurance Team Homeowner's Insurance 101
PERSONAL LINES - HOMEOWNER'S INSURANCE
You and your spouse saved for years for your dream home.
You have the memories of your two children being brought home to the hospital. You decorated special rooms for both.
You have spent thousands of dollars on mounted fish caught in Alaska and Black Bear and Elk killed in Washington.
The spouse has scrap-booked hundreds of images into frame artwork.
Sure, you can get everything back after a house fire, but you do have all those memories.
However, what if you found out only too late that your last agent only cared about making a quick buck, rather than build a long-term business relationship with you.
After the fire, you remember that have not done a review in over 15 years on your homeowner’s policy.
You find out the following the hard way:
1. Your home policy had everything insured for Actual Cash Value, (which means everything is going to be replaced at its actual cash value, not the cost to replace it.)
2. Unlike an Auto, the value of your home appreciates over the years. Based on that knowledge, do you think that the value of your home has appreciated the last 20 years ago? You better believe it has!
3. If your home is rated for the value, it was appraised 20 years ago, you are going to be facing a loss of Thousands and Thousands of dollars in the replacement of your home.
4. Worse… if you have Actual Cash Value vs. Replacement value your home and property is going to be replaced at the ACV from when you purchased your policy rather than what it is going to cost to replace at today’s value. Do you think you might lose thousands of dollars more? I guarantee you will!
5. What if you lost all your inherited Jewelry and Guns and Stamp Collection and Coins that both sets of parents have passed on to you when they passed away over the years? What if to save yourself some money and you listened to your agent (that did not care about you or your life savings or your home or your Mother’s Wedding, Or your Great-Grandfather’s Henry Rifle from the 1800s, or your Grandfather’s M1911 pistol from World War I, oh or your wife’s Grandmother Nan who had a stamp of the plane flying upside or the hundreds of other priceless stamps and coins she gave you when she passed) What if you didn’t put those items on Scheduled Items list and you just insured them for what the regular line item coverages were?
6. What if the same agent convinced you to save your money and told you “not to worry about upping your liability and medical coverage, you are safe people and no one is going to fall on your property, you can get away with cut-rate liability and you certainly don’t need one of the Personal Umbrella policies)” What if someone falls on your frozen front lawn and breaks their back and they are in traction for a year. The attorneys are going to sue you and if the lawsuit is more than your liability they are going after your business if you own one (In most states an LLC will not protect you) and if they still have not gotten enough money out of you, they will garnish 25% of your wages until the lawsuit and their attorneys’ fees are paid off or you both die, whichever comes first.

Most insurance agents do not/will not take the time to educate their clients because they do not care about their clients. The average captive Agency owner must do the “captive agent profit to loss dance”. Even though it cost a heck of a lot more to track down a new client than to protect, educate and grow with one they already have, they do not care about building long-term growth and building a long-term business relationship with their clients.
The industry’s 75% or less retention rate on average bears that out.
Captive agents work for one Insurance company and only one. That one insurance company judges them on their sales ratios of Life insurance to Homeowners and Auto. If they do not sell enough life and Homeowners and Auto guess what happens? They could and in many situations do, lose their agency.
Just as a comparison, The Washington Insurance Team has partnered with one of the nation’s largest groups of Independent Insurance agents across the country. We represent over 200 insurance carriers. If a carrier does not take care of our client, we will make sure we find one that does. The entities that we work with as independent agents average a 90+ retention rate.