a tale of two insurance policies
When you suffer a loss from a catastrophic fire, that is not the time to investigate the history of your insurance company’s payment of claims. I reminded my daughter 30 years ago when she found a cheaper auto insurance company that she also needed to consider their track record for paying claims. A few years after being married to her husband, he said, “The best thing about being married to Emily is USAA” (an insurance company—I have had for over 50 years).
Which brings us to this New York Times article, One Fire, Two Burned Homes and Wildly Different Insurance Outcomes The homes were in the very same neighborhood and of approximately the same value. Basically, new construction. The fires occurred in Colorado, and they were part of a large urban conflagration. Hopefully, you can read the article and see the difference in how they were treated, timeliness of payments and the amount of loss reimbursed. This same story will be played out many times soon in Los Angeles—for those that had insurance.
I recall this book, From Good Hands to Boxing Gloves: The Dark Side of Insurance which provides more details than the article above about the shift in how some insurance companies looked to maximize their profits at a cost to their clients when they experienced property losses.
Another more practical book, and one I’ve highlighted repeatedly here in this blog is, The Red Guide to Recovery: Resource Handbook for Disaster There is information in their about what you can do before a disaster to maximize getting a better payout and how to deal with an insurance company that is balking at what you believe you are owed.
