It has never been more important to shop your policy with more than one agent!
You can save money by changing insurer, coverage for your home – Sun Sentinel June 4, 2007
Kathy Bushouse of the Sun-Sentinel has captured in one story, all of the things that Florida homeowners should be doing to save money on their Florida home insurance:
Changing deductibles
Making sure you are getting all of the hurricane mitigation discounts you are entitled to.
And, most importantly, shopping around for coverage.
If your agent is telling you that you have to go into Citizens Property Insurance Corporation or a very high priced private carrier, its time for you to take control of your own situation by aggressively shopping around with more than one agent. Read more about why using your Florida home insurance agent is not enough!
But you have to be careful. As Kathy Bushouse points out in this article, many of the companies that are still accepting new business are recently formed companies. You have to pay attention to things like their financial ratings, the percentage discounts they give for hurricane mitigation discounts, along with their customer service and complaint history.
If you have decided enough is enough, and want to shop your policy, you should check out The Home Insurance Buyers Guide.
When you use the Home Insurance Buyers Guide to shop for your Florida homeowner insurance, you change the playing field dramatically in your favor:
First, you start by finding out exactly who is writing new homeowner insurance business in Florida - Private admitted carriers that are regulated by the Florida Office of Insurane Regulation – Not surplus insurance companies with a limited amount of oversight and regulation.
In the Buyers Guide you won’t find insurance companies who claim they are writing new business but in reality are only writing policies for agents and their relatives as a special favor. We can help you find companies like Northern Capital Insurance Company – a company that saved the homeowners in the Sun Sentinel article thousands of dollars!
If you wanted to research a company’s history, track record, customer service history, and financial stability, you could do it yourself. But you would have to visit a lot of websites. We’ve eliminated that for you by developing a Buyers Guide Rating that rates each company on a scale of 1-10 and takes into consideration all of the publicly available information about each insurance company.
When you enter our database, you start by searching for company’s accepting new business in your county. You can sort this list either alphabetically or by the Buyers Guide rating.
We tell you what kind of underwriting guidelines the company may have – things like the age of the home, type of home construction, and whether their coverage includes screenhouses and sinkholes!
Once you’ve decided which companies you are interested in, we provide convenient ways for you to find out who the agents are that represent them. You decide which agents you want to contact in order to obtain coverage with that company.
Getting quotes from multiple agents creates a competitive situation that puts you in the drivers seat.
When you start with the companies first and then find agents who can help you, your chances of finding affordable, private insurance improve dramatically!
Kathy Bushouse has hit the nail on the head with this article. She has shared with all Floridians exactly what they need to do to find affordable, private insurance. Take action on Kathy’s recommendations by purchasing The Home Insurance Buyers Guide.
When you do, you’ll see why we are changing the way homeowners shop for insurance!