"The disaster recovery resources you provided helped many individuals and families."
Bach Talk
February 17, 2016
UP is constantly working to publish information and guidance on investing your insurance dollars wisely by patronizing companies that offer quality protection and have a record of good claim service. We promote shopping tools that allow consumers to compare coverage side by side. We promote and support efforts by state insurance regulators to make it easy for the public to review complaint records, market conduct exams and sample policies. We are cheerleaders for an entrepreneurial initiative called ValChoice that distributes reports on insurance company claim...
Read More January 16, 2016
Being a small non-profit has it's up side: United Policyholders is dynamic. We don't have layers of internal bureaucracy that slow us down when we want to respond to a disaster or make improvements to our programs, publications and tools. We are constantly enhancing our tips and tools with new information and feedback from our volunteers, experts and the people we help.
During the Roadmap to Recovery workshop I led in Mountain Ranch, California this past week, we were...
Read More November 23, 2015
When you buy insurance, you pay for coverage and good service if and when you file a claim. Good claim service includes estimating the extent and value of your claim fairly and promptly. Insurance company claim adjusters often bring in outside experts to inspect and give their opinions. There's been much written by our organization and others about problems that arise when adjusters bring in outside experts who are too cozy with them and inclined to underestimate damage or find an excluded cause of loss. This can happen where the expert is motivated to please...
Read More November 21, 2015
The business of insurance is primarily regulated by individual states with a minimal amount of oversight by the Federal Government. State regulators coordinate with each other through an organization called The National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Three times a year, the NAIC hosts a conference that lasts 4 days. Each day is jam packed with meetings starting at 7:30 am on everything from regulating insurers' finances to marketplace oversight to health care reform implementation and a thousand other issues. In closed door and open meetings, regulators and their...
Read More October 26, 2015
Most people pay their home, business and renters insurance premiums for years and years without ever having a loss or using the policy they’re paying for. Yet even people who’ve had a long claim-free record are finding that after they do suffer a loss and file a claim, they get dropped (non-renewed). This has been happening more and more as insurers base their business decisions on data-mining and information technology. People are finding that when they use their insurance, they lose their insurance. And it can be very hard to find another insurance company to...
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