House Insurance Cancellations to Be Prevented by Bill in Louisiana is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

Cheap Home Insurance and Consumer Rights Are Top Concerns is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

Home Insurance Companies in California Take Notice is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

The bill would allow home insurers to increase their premiums throughout the state by a total average of 33 percent over the next 3 years. The increase rate limit is 5 percent for the first year, 10 percent for the following year and 15 percent for the third year. The premiums can increase in certain areas by more than the average rate statewide.

According to supporters of the bill, the increase in rates would attract more insurance firms to write house insurance policies throughout the state and strengthen the Florida real estate insurance market. It would also increase the ability of insurers to pay claims in case a major hurricane hits the state again.

Opponents of the bill, however, argued that home insurance rates already shot up in Florida after the hurricanes in 2004 and in 2005 and that homeowners cannot afford further rate increases.

Bill Newton, head of the Florida Consumer Action Network, asked legislators not to pass the bill because they already passed previously a 10-percent yearly increase requested by the home insurance companies.

Florida Governor Charlie Crist and Florida Insurance Consumer Advocate Sean Shaw also opposed the bill. State senators who did not vote for the bill were Ronda Storms, Alex Villalobos, Joe Negron and Senate President Pro Tempore Mike Fasano.

FCAN head Newton expressed his concerns about the fact that all Democrats on the insurance committee passed the legislation and other insurance bills.

Previously, the state Senate passed a property insurance legislation that allow insurers to pass certain coverage costs to homeowners, such as backup coverage costs and inflation-related costs.

According to Senator Garrett Richter, the bill was designed to address the cost drivers that are making insurers insolvent. Over the past year, the state of Florida has taken over three home insurers because of their financial difficulties, including one insurer providing workers compensation coverage.

The past few years also saw some major insurers like State Farm threatening to stop writing home insurance policies in Florida if their requests for substantial rate increases were rejected. The approval of the rate increases over the past weeks is expected to appease major home insurance companies, according to some supporters of the bill.

Home Insurance Companies in Florida Got Rate Hike Requests is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

A listed website is a site that has one or more of the following: it has been accredited by the Best Business Bureau, has been included in Top Ten lists, has been reviewed in recognized websites, has high rankings in Alexa or other traffic analysis systems or has been rated high in consumer surveys.

It is important that you choose a reputable comparison website to ensure you are getting the right and updated data from a recognized and stable home insurance company. Good comparison sites represent reputable insurance companies.

If you are new to the house insurance industry, here are some of the insurance firms usually mentioned in top-ten lists or consumer surveys in random order: Allstate, State Farm, Progressive, Hartford, Geico, Amica, Alfa, Nationwide, Farmers, Cincinnati and American Family.

If a number of these firms are represented by the comparison site, then the comparison website is more likely to be reputable.

There are also comparison sites that require you to provide your email address, including detailed information about your house, before they give you a home insurance quote, so this is another reason to make sure you are dealing with a BBB-accredited site.

If you want just an estimate of a standard home insurance, there are sites that need only two pieces of information: your zip code and the year your house was built.

After getting the best insurance quote from a comparison site, you can also check the rate given to you by visiting the website of the insurance firm recommended. Insurance company websites give more specific information as to how they can reduce your rates or how they give you price discounts in ways different from other insurance firms.

According to insurance experts, do not rely too much on company loyalty for discounts. They say that among the best ways to get discounts is increasing the deductibles. However, increase your deductibles only to a point affordable to you in case you have to make a claim.

Remember also that insurance rates are higher in coastal areas and in fire-prone areas and that some companies do not operate in certain states or areas of the country.

On the whole, make sure that the home insurance quote you are getting is for an insurance policy that covers most or all housing risks in your area.

Home Insurance Quote – Get It from Listed Comparison Sites is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

A lot of websites now are offering all types of insurance quotes, but before they provide you with their response, they first require you to fill up an online form and disclose your financial and personal information. If you are not careful, your information could be sold to marketers or worse, you could become a victim of identity theft.

There are, however, providers of insurance quotes that need only basic information such as name of city and state, zip code, type of house, number of bedrooms, estimate area, age of house and other information. You could try these just to get some estimates and have a general comparison of quotes from several insurance companies.

You can get the names of reputable companies in your state by contacting your state department of insurance. A number of websites operated by state insurance departments are user-friendly, updated frequently and complete with information needed by consumers.

Another resource is the website of the New York City-based Insurance Information Institute, an organization founded in the 1960s to educate consumers about insurance. This resource helps you how to get and use a home insurance quote properly. It also has a feature where you can see a list of home insurance companies operating in your state.

Another website that you can check is the insurance.insureuonline.org, which is operated by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. This site informs consumers on how they can protect themselves from insurance fraud.

You can also know the names of insurance firms with good customer feedback by reading industry surveys and online reviews and by checking the most visited home insurance websites.

A survey conducted by J.D. Power showed that the top companies with the highest customer satisfaction ratings in 2009 were Amica Mutual, Auto-Owners, Erie Insurance, State Farm, USAA, Alfa, Hartford and Cincinnati Insurance. For a start, you can get quotes from the websites of these firms and then compare.

Additionally, the Amazon.com-owned website traffic information provider Alexa lists State Farm, Geico, Farmers Insurance, Allstate and Nationwide as among the insurance sites getting the most traffic from consumers.

All in all, remember that the two most important things to consider when you are getting an insurance quote are the stability of the insurance firm and the perils covered by your policy.

Get a Home Insurance Quote from Top Insurers in Your State is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

Make sure you get the lowest quotes from among insurance companies that have track records in responding to claims promptly and that have been operating successfully over the past several years. See to it also that you are comparing quotes for the same type of coverage. A certain quote from a particular company might be lower because it pays only a fixed amount or reduced amount while the higher quote pays the amount needed to replace a destroyed house.

To ascertain whether an insurance firm is stable, call the Department of Insurance in your state at 1-866-470-NAIC and ask for information.

You may also want to compare only quotes from insurance companies that are being cited in consumer surveys. In the most recent insurance industry survey conducted by J.D. Power, the top issuers of house insurance based on customer satisfaction were Amica Mutual, Erie Insurance, Auto-Owners and State Farm.

You can also try others cited in the survey such as Alfa, Hartford Insurance, Farmers, Nationwide, Allstate, Cincinnati Insurance and Automobile Club of Southern California.

In many websites that provide home insurance quotes, these insurance companies are also cited – GMAC, Unitrin, Liberty Mutual and American Family Insurance – in addition to the previously-mentioned insurance firms.

You can also choose insurance quotes from among issuers that topped in 2008 based on direct premiums written, as compiled by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. They were State Farm, Allstate, Zurich, Liberty Mutual, Travelers, Nationwide, USAA, Chubb & Son, American Family and Hartford Fire.

After getting insurance quotes within your budget from one or more of these companies, then you can go and compare the perils covered and the claims accepted. Make sure that property damages from fire, lightning, hail, wind, water, freezing and theft are covered and that your liabilities for property damage, bodily injuries and medical costs are also included.

In 2007, according to the Insurance Services Office, around 95 percent of house insurance claims involved property damage and theft, so make sure you are properly covered against these and against the most common perils in your state.

After researching home insurance quotes to help you purchase your best policy, consider obtaining a policy that protect against perils like earthquake, flood or hurricane which are not usually covered by standard house insurance policies.

Home Insurance Quotes: Check Also Issuers and Coverage is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

But insiders who have seen these things and customers who have experienced them have revealed them to other people. Now it is your turn to know them.

Among their secrets are the ways they do to lessen their chances of paying out insurance claims. Without being upfront about them, some insurance firms do discriminate against certain people, refusing to issue policies when their insurance risk is higher.

According to findings by the Consumer Federation of America, some insurers have been instructing their agents not to sell to couples with marriage problems, older people with companions and residents of certain zip codes.

The house insurance policies of people who slightly increase their risks due to certain actions are also not renewed by some insurers, such as customers who make dog bite claims, who start a home-based business or who miss one or two credit card payments.

Worse, once a customer is dropped by one home insurance firm, the other insurers need lots of convincing before issuing a policy. Some others flatly refuse to issue a policy. Independent insurance agent Michael Grace said that insurance firms are purely business; they believe that some people are simply prone to insurance claims.

Insurance firms also use Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange reports to look for past claim patterns. This service was launched to prevent fraud in the insurance industry, but it is now being used by insurers against persons who have filed legitimate insurance claims in previous years.

Former Massachusetts Insurance Commissioner Linda Ruthardt said that once insurers see a claims record in the CLUE report, many of them refuse to issue a policy even if the past claim was legitimate.

Policyholders have been asking their agents about the limits of small claims that they can file before they are branded as risky clients, but insurers do not give definite replies. Independent agent Ron Sundermann said that the policy of his client was not renewed by his insurance firm after the client made four small claims over a three-year period.

These are just some of the practices by insurance companies that you need to know. Be informed so you can get the best home insurance policy from the best company.

Home Insurance Secrets You Might Not Know Yet but Should is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

The study showed that the projected return on investment this year dropped by 0.4 percent, making house insurance a losing option for investors. Aon Benfield said that the ROE for house insurance products dropped to 6.1 percent in August 2009 from 6.5 percent in August last year.

Aon Benfield said that if insurance firms cannot show reasonable ROE levels for the home insurance line, private capital investors who have been pouring their money into the home insurance market will withdraw and look for more profitable insurance product lines.

According to Aon, this low ROE level has forced many home insurance companies to leave some states and to stop issuing certain riskier home insurance products. As a result, the study added, state governments have been taking over, issuing insurance policies in insurance lines and in geographical areas where home insurance company enterprises refuse to sell house insurance policies.

As states often cannot afford to sustain increasing insurance liabilities, they eventually turn for financial assistance from the federal government.

Bryon Ehrhart, CEO of Aon Benfield, further explained that it is surprising that state governments continue to block insurance companies from rising from their huge losses during the catastrophe years and replenish the huge capital they have lost.

The report, however, recognized that home insurance companies in some states are operating profitably, but in other states, insurers have been struggling.

Prospective rates of return in Washington, D.C. and in four states are more than 10 percent, while the ROE in states like California, Massachusetts and Mississippi was lower than 2.5 percent.

Aon Benfield estimated that home insurers need to increase their rates by over 26 percent so they can realize a 14-percent rate of return. In hurricane-prone Florida, rates need to increase by nearly 94 percent while in North Carolina, an increase of nearly 2 percent is adequate.

Along the Gulf Coast and the East Coast which are prone to hurricanes, rates need to increase by around 36 percent to realize a 14-percent ROE. For the remaining regions, rates need to rise by more than 15 percent to enable home insurance company enterprises to realize a 14-percent rate of return.

Home Insurance Company Crisis Must be Averted, Aon Says is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.

It is most probable also that you already have a home insurance from a certain company and it is up for renewal. If you have been with this insurance firm for many years, check if you can get a substantial discount for being a loyal customer. Just make sure that this insurance firm is financially stable by checking its financial condition at the web sites of rating firms such as Standard & Poor’s, your state insurance commission and the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Compare also price ranges using online insurance quotes, consumer guides and the web sites of other insurance firms to see if your insurance firm is giving you a great price. But make sure that when you are comparing prices, you also consider features and services. A certain home insurance may be cheaper, but it has certain separate deductibles.

One of the ways to reduce your premium is to make your house more resistant to disasters. Ask your insurance firm what it is looking for when it is considering disaster prevention features. You may have to add storm shutters, replace or reinforce your roofing materials or modernize your plumbing systems to prevent water damage.

Another is to check if your firm considered your credit rating when it priced your insurance. It may have found something that was erroneously included in your credit report. A good credit report is also beneficial in other aspects of your life, so maintain your good credit record. Keep your credit card balances low and make your monthly payments on time.

You can also get at least 5 percent discount for improving your security and safety systems, such as installing a burglar alarm, smoke detector or deadbolt locks. There are other safety systems such as sophisticated sprinkler systems linked with monitoring stations, but these are expensive systems. They may get you added discounts but you may have to make big investments.

Before you buy a home, check the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange report for the house. This report shows you the claim history of the house and can help you check out the problems or disasters that the house has undergone.

Homeowner Insurance Buying Advice from Insurance Institute is a post from InsuranceWay.com - Find Your Way through the Home Insurance Jungle.