“(United Policyholders) provided helpful insights into the state of the current insurance market for earthquake, fire and flood coverage, and the critical rile insurance plays in the ability of our communities recover from such catastrophic events. You brought an important and unique perspective to the hearing, that of homeowners themselves.”
Bach Talk
April 4, 2019
Insurance remains a critically important source of disaster recovery financing for individuals, businesses and government, but insurers must do a better job at insuring homes to value and paying benefits in a timely manner, UP Co-Founder and Executive Director Amy Bach told a high level California Commission yesterday in Santa Rosa, CA. Further, a recent attempt by at least one insurer to change their policies to limit payouts for...
Read More March 25, 2019
If a home or business owner in the United States can't find property insurance in the private market, they can buy it through a variety of hybrid public/private arrangements, often referred to as "pools" or "Residual Market Mechanisms" (insurance lingo for programs that cover risks private market insurers don't want). These arrangements are federal and state government sponsored "last resort" programs through which an individual or business can buy insurance for fires, terrorist attacks, earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding, and other risks.
These programs are...
Read More March 5, 2019
UP weighed in today with a letter to Florida state lawmakers to urge their no votes on three bills that will gut policyholder protections in that state if enacted as written. House Bill 301, Senate Bill 714, House Bill 751.
Honorable Florida lawmakers:
Our non-profit organization speaks on behalf of the millions of Florida home and...
Read More February 12, 2019
Some leaders in the financial services community work hard to weaken consumer protection regulations and the agencies that enforce them. But it clear from recent history (2008) that the American economy works much better when financial consumer protections are in place and being enforced.
UP is among 80 organizations that co-signed a letter strongly opposing a proposal to seriously weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's...
Read More January 22, 2019
Generally speaking, home insurance companies are free to pick which homes they want to insure and which they don't. There has been an explosion in tech tools that insurance companies can use to assess risks and decide who and what they are willing to insure and how much they will charge to sell policies and meet their business goals. Drones, GPS technology, data mining, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics are making it easy for insurance companies to be far more calculated than they had been about their decisions on the types of buildings, people and...
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