September 4, 2024 • 25 mins
Your auto and home insurance can have a significant impact on your budget, but it’s hard to know if you’re getting the best rate. Our guest, Amy from the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC), joins us to provide tips on shopping around for insurance and the value of having an agent.
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(00:00):
Music. Welcome back
(00:05):
To Fund Your Future with DRS. Today, we're covering a topic that can have small
and big impacts on your budget, insurance.
We've had several episodes regarding medical insurance, but today we're going
to focus on the other two big ones, auto insurance and home and slash renter's insurance.
And fortunately for us, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner,
(00:27):
or OIC for short, recently started a podcast all about insurance called OIC Answers on Insurance.
So we've reached out to their team to welcome a guest onto our show.
So we're happy to welcome Amy from OIC, who works in the Consumer Advocacy Division
to answer some of our burning insurance questions. Welcome, Amy.
(00:50):
Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Yeah.
Amy, thanks for joining us. This episode idea actually came from one of our
listeners who said, you know, insurance is a big part of their budget and wanted
to have some more conversations about this.
So just in research for this episode, I did some quick internet searching around
renter's insurance and home insurance in the state of Washington and found that
(01:13):
renter's insurance is somewhere around maybe $15 a month and homeowner's insurance
might be somewhere around $100 a month.
And I'm assuming that those amounts can vary widely depending on where you live
and what sort of residence you're insuring.
So what are the different types of policies a person would consider for their residence?
And what are the sort of things that are usually covered by insurance?
(01:35):
And what are the sort of things that are not covered by insurance?
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to talk about that.
You're pretty close on the costs. It really does depend upon where your home
is located, if we're talking about homeowner's insurance, and the value of your
home, the construction of your home.
There's so much that goes into determining how much you're going to pay for
(01:59):
your insurance premium.
So with a homeowner's policy, your home is covered.
And most insurance companies, like your Allstate, State Farm,
Farmer's Insurance, those companies have what's called package policies.
Policies and they include the dwelling, other structures, your contents,
your liability, your loss of use.
So if you had a fire, say, and you had to live somewhere else for a period while it was being rebuilt.
(02:23):
The loss of use, and then it has also a guest medical coverage.
And that's a package and it all encompasses those different sections that you might need.
There are always exclusions and provisions within the policy that could change that.
So for instance, if you have jewelry or guns or furs or money,
(02:44):
those things actually have to be scheduled on your policy.
They're not automatically covered to the limit under your policy.
There are what we call special limits for those types of things.
Earthquakes not covered under a regular homeowner policy, that's something you'd have to add.
Floods not covered under, flood like from a river, is not covered under those policies.
(03:05):
Landslides, those kind of catastrophic things aren't covered under a standard homeowner policy.
And with the renter's policy, it's the same thing, minus the dwelling.
Everything else is covered. Your content, your liability, your guest medical,
and that loss of use as well.
I recommend folks get renter's insurance.
(03:25):
It's a really reasonable investment.
And people just don't realize that they have what contents.
So many people say, well, I don't have $10,000 worth of things.
You probably do just in your living room.
Yeah. So renter's insurance can cover those things like if your couch gets destroyed
or, you know, obviously if something like the refrigerator breaks,
(03:48):
you could charge that to your landlord.
But renter's insurance is a good thing for covering your furniture and like
you said, your personal belongings, right?
Right. And it also follows you. So any kind of insurance you have follows you.
So say you're on vacation, 10% of your coverage for your renters or your homeowner
for your contents is covered while you're away from your home on vacation.
(04:11):
Or if you have it in storage, if you have items in like a storage unit,
10% of that coverage for contents for home or renters is covered as well.
So there's actually a lot of things that people don't really think about,
out. Usually not until they need it is when they think about it.
That's awesome. I wanted to ask about bundling as well. A lot of these insurance
(04:32):
companies have these commercials where they talk about bundling,
but that's kind of what you were mentioning there was those package deals.
The bundling is, it's a really good thing. If you include more than one type
of insurance policy in the same insurance company, most, if not all companies
will give you a discount.
So if you have your home and auto in the same insurance company,
(04:53):
then you get a discount on your home and your auto.
It's called multiple policy discount. It's a good thing.
Sometimes you'll find though that your auto is super high or your home is with
that company and it doesn't benefit you to bundle them.
But I would always check to see if you can insure them together.
And it doesn't have to always be home and auto. It could be renters and auto.
(05:15):
It could be home and umbrella, which we could talk about a little bit later.
If you're interested, that's a liability coverage.
If you injure or damage somebody's property, that's your liability.
That's an umbrella policy. So it could be any or a boat policy or an RV policy.
As long as there's multiple policies together, that's a bundling and each policy
(05:35):
will experience a discount. And discounts are great today.
Discounts are, we need discounts.
I'm a coupon stopper and it's the same with insurance as far as I'm concerned.
And then we can talk a little bit about auto insurance.
That obviously depends on a lot of factors as well. Things like your age,
your driving history, the type of vehicle that you're driving.
(05:59):
What are some factors to consider when shopping for auto insurance? insurance.
Yeah. And right now auto insurance is really high.
We have a hotline through our agency. I work in the consumer advocacy department.
So I'm, I listened to a lot of consumer calls and concerns about things.
And so auto insurance right now is a hot topic mainly because it's expensive, right?
(06:21):
It's really expensive today. I don't know about you too, but I know when my
rates came in, mine increased, it increased substantially.
And so the one thing that I do say, especially with with auto insurance is shop around.
You know, it's, it's a product. I think we forget that insurance is a product
that we purchase that we are the customers for.
(06:45):
And so I suggest folks shop around for their auto insurance.
There's a lot of factors that go into it. If you have young drivers,
you're going to pay more money.
If you have accidents or tickets on your record, you're going to pay more money.
And then the different insurance companies look for different things.
So there's some companies that are really interested in insuring teachers, for instance.
And so they're They're going to gear their policies towards those teachers to
(07:09):
try and entice them to their program or to their policy.
And so shopping is a good thing.
Multiple vehicles on a policy is going to give you a discount.
I know it's kind of hard to believe.
Sometimes if you have two vehicles, it might be cheaper than having one vehicle. I know.
I know. I don't know how many times people have said, I'm going to take my vehicle
(07:29):
off and I'm going to save money. And I'm like, oh, you might lose a discount. Don't. won't.
So, you know, those are things that I have an insurance agent that I use.
I'm an insurance professional. I know more than my agent does.
However, I have an agent because I want that middleman. I want that person I
can talk to and say, Hey, my premium went up by a hundred dollars a month, shot my insurance.
(07:51):
She goes out, does her thing, tries to find me a better policy, can or can't.
And then I get to make an educated decision about what I'm going to do then.
And, you know, these are costs that they're not set.
We can't rely on, you know, it's going to be $500 a month or $100 a month or $200 a month.
It changes for auto every six months. And then for your home, it can change annually.
(08:14):
Yeah. So you're talking about an insurance agent who basically you have someone
who works as sort of like a neutral party and then they can go out and do the,
it sounds like the insurance shopping for you.
Absolutely. So our office also licenses the insurance agents.
They're now called producers, but we license the insurance agents.
And there are some insurance agents that only work with one insurance company.
(08:39):
And then there are some that work with multiple companies.
I'm an insurance expert, but I still use an agent because I want to have that
middleman. And I want to have that person who's looking out for me when I don't
have the time to look out for myself.
And so my agent, she's great. I text her in the middle of the night.
I'm sure she's like, Amy, please stop.
But I do. If I remember something in the middle of the night,
(09:01):
instead of trying to remember it tomorrow, I text my agent.
And I'm able to have that kind of relationship where she can tell me,
you know, this is what's coming down the pike. You might see a rate increase.
I like to have an agent in the middle, man. I look at it this way.
My insurance company is the big department store.
My agent is the salesperson. And that's who I'm talking to.
(09:24):
And I suggest it. There's some agents that will charge a fee.
I don't use an agent that charges a fee.
Because that was going to be my next question is, what is something like an insurance agent cost?
Except in your example, they're not actually working for the department store.
They're working for like multiple department stores, basically.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So the great thing about my agent, I want to say she
(09:46):
represents between 15 and 20 companies.
So imagine you either going on the phone, calling 15 or 20 companies to get quotes or online.
I forget online because online, then you get all these messages constantly,
but online, you know, going to all these companies instead of doing that,
I have one agent who will do that for me.
(10:08):
She'll go to those 15 or 20 companies, shop my insurance, present me to those
companies and whether or not I can get that better rate.
And I just prefer that. And I've done many times, I've done my own online shopping
and I still get emails from quotes I've done online from a year ago where they're
still, you know, and I'm not interested in that.
(10:29):
So you can check on our website to make sure they're licensed and who they represent.
And it's just, for me, it's a benefit that I will always use,
even though I'm an insurance expert. Yeah, so that's what I was going to ask.
If someone is looking for an
insurance agent like that, could they find a resource on the OIC website?
Yeah. On our website, we list all of the licensed agents and their status.
(10:53):
So you'll see how long they've been licensed, who they represent,
if they've had any complaints against them. It's all public record.
And to tell you the truth, the way I suggest people get an agent is talk to
your friends, see who they're using.
Word of mouth is the best advertising.
And I want to know if my friend next door is happy with their agent,
(11:13):
because we don't know until we actually have that relationship.
So I, I checked with my friends, this agent I have, I actually worked with her
when I was an agent 24 years ago.
So I already knew that I could rely on this person.
That's cool. I'm going to have to check that out now. I mean,
I feel like I have pretty good braids with my insurance company, but you never know.
(11:34):
Right. And that's the thing. So that's the other thing, you know,
we stay with a company, we have loyalty to a company and we're not quite sure,
you know, if we feel like, okay, this is in my budget, I can do this.
There's nothing wrong with checking to make sure. It's what we're in right now
is called a hard market. It just means things are really difficult. It just is.
But before that period, every time I shopped my insurance, I found a cheaper rate.
(11:57):
And for me, I'd like that. Like I said, I'm a coupon shopper. I want a cheaper rate.
So you mentioned that you listen to a lot of phone calls that come in or review
a lot of calls from Washington state residents about their insurance.
And I've I've actually learned a lot from listening to the OIC podcast about
what your office does and how it works.
But I'm curious, what sort of pitfalls do people run into when they're working
(12:22):
with their insurance companies?
Are there common mistakes that people make when filing a claim or when making
assumptions about their insurance?
Yeah, just curious from your perspective.
Yes. So I've been with the insurance commissioner's office for 22 years,
and I've been in this type of position.
I'm a senior compliance analyst.
(12:44):
And so what I do is look into complaints against insurance companies.
And I think really the greatest service I do is educating the public on their
rights and what they can do to advocate for themselves.
I think it's so important if we have knowledge, then we don't feel so afraid
to be able to advocate for ourselves.
The complaints we get are rates. The rates are going up. They're too high.
(13:07):
What do we do? Can they really increase my rates 70% those we also get I'd cancel
my policy and they haven't sent me a refund,
that's something we try and help with to get those to figure out what happened
or a lot of folks will contact us and say I think my agent's lying to me okay
we have a division for that or it might be a misunderstanding because a lot
(13:30):
of consumers can feel like the agent is the insurance company yeah.
That's not actually the case. Then they feel like when something happens that
they don't like that the agent's doing it rather than the insurance company.
Non-renewals. Right now with wildfires going on in Eastern Washington,
there's a lot of companies that are either not writing new homeowner policies
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or they're non-renewing homeowner policies because of those wildfires. We talk a lot about that.
For me, it's super important to hear what's going on in the market today because
our office does review insurance companies to see what's going on,
make sure they're doing the things they're supposed to.
But in real time, when somebody calls me and says, my insurance company did
this, if it's something that I think needs to be looked into,
(14:15):
I'll contact the company.
I'll ask them what they did, why
they did it, and make sure that they're following the laws of our state.
We have RCW 48 is the insurance laws.
And then the insurance rules are WAC, Washington Administrative Code 284.
And so those are the things that we look at to make sure insurance companies
are doing the things they're supposed to.
(14:36):
You mentioned umbrella insurance. And I think the person who brought the idea
of doing an episode about insurance,
I think that was part of kind of where their questions were coming up about
how do I know if I'm underinsured or overinsured kind of just as a human being?
I don't know if that's the right way to say it, But it's definitely something
people think about when they think about their overall finances.
(15:00):
And that's what we talk about a lot in our podcast is kind of overall personal
finance. And do I have enough insurance? Am I paying too much for insurance?
Do I not have enough insurance? Like, I'm just curious what your thoughts are
on umbrella policies and how they work and why somebody might consider one or not.
Sure. Yeah. So the thing is, we don't give advice. So I'm not a financial advisor.
(15:22):
So I'm not going to tell somebody you should do this, this and that.
However, I would say that if you have the assets that should be protected in
the event that something happens, that's what an umbrella liability policy can do for you.
So when you have your homeowner's insurance, you have that liability we talked about.
And that is if you damage somebody's property, if you injure somebody by mistake,
(15:47):
your kid does something and damages somebody's property, that's all covered
under your homeowner liability.
And then under your auto insurance, you're in an auto accident,
you rear end somebody, you know, they get whiplash, that's your liability.
And so with those two coverages, your home and your auto, it depends upon how
(16:07):
much insurance coverage you are carrying.
But in order to have an umbrella, which goes over the top of those two,
you'd have to carry a certain limit of liability.
It's usually around $250,000 on each policy, your auto and your home.
And then the umbrella is normally a million dollars and they're cheap.
They're just cheap. You know, most companies, you can get a million dollar umbrella for $150 a year.
(16:33):
It depends. It depends upon your exposure. If you have kids that are driving,
bigger exposure, right?
You have more liability, more expensive umbrella. So, and those things are all
taken into consideration.
If you have, you know, I have RVs and you have all terrain vehicles and you
have boats and you have rental houses and you have, you know,
(16:55):
the more things you have, the more assets you have, the more you could lose,
the more liability you might want.
And that's when you think about whether or not you want an umbrella.
I think an umbrella is a great thing.
A lot of times folks mistake it for coverage for themselves when in fact it
is coverage for you, but it's coverage to protect you against a lawsuit where
(17:20):
you might lose your assets.
It's not something you can get because your house burned to the ground and you
have a million dollar umbrella. That's not what it's for.
It's for that liability where you've injured or damaged somebody,
and now they might sue you to recover those damages or that injury.
In something beyond what my homeowner policy or my auto policy would cover.
(17:45):
Okay, that's really helpful context.
Let me just say really quick, I have, in my time with the insurance commissioner's
office, had many, many calls from folks.
And we think, oh my gosh, a million dollars, that's a lot of money.
Annie, I just spoke to somebody who was in an accident and their injury is over a million dollars.
That's just their injury, just their treatment, their life flight, their hospital.
(18:10):
That's just their treatment. And so if I damage somebody and I have my 250,000
liability on my auto, and then I have my million umbrella, they're still not
made whole because that just paid their medical bills.
It didn't pay for their pain and suffering, their inability to live life the
way they normally live life.
So it's really not as great as it used to be, I'd say.
(18:34):
So that's why I don't think it's a bad thing. And I think it's something that folks should consider.
Yeah, this is all really great information. And Amy, what do you wish is the
one thing that people knew about insurance?
There's a couple things, right? Like I was saying, I really advocate for folks having knowledge.
I can tell you that one thing with homeowner insurance is we pay into insurance
(18:59):
And we expect that when something happens, it's going to be covered.
And that's not always the case because there's some things that aren't covered.
And we just have to know that we have to look at our policies.
Like you said, earthquakes and floods are a big one.
Floods from natural disasters. Or if my hot water heater has been leaking for
a month and I didn't know it, it's not covered.
(19:20):
And a lot of folks don't know that. And I've seen some instances where folks
have had no coverage because they weren't aware something happened and it's
just not covered under a homeowner policy.
So I wish folks had a better way of getting more information about how the policies
work. It's not an easy thing.
Insurance policies are legal language. They're not black and white ABC little kid can understand.
(19:45):
And like I said, I'm guilty of it too. When I get that renewal,
sometimes I look, sometimes I don't. sometimes I just look to see what the price
is, but it's so important that we review those things and we go to our agent.
When that agent emails you or texts you or calls you and says,
let's review, review, do it.
I went to the Eastern Washington fires, the medical lake fires.
(20:08):
It was the Gray fires and the Oregon fires.
And I've never experienced this, not in my 22 years in regulation.
Every single person I spoke to was underinsured. Wow.
Everyone. So 100% underinsured. And a lot of folks said, I never spoke to my
agent. I never did the reviews.
(20:29):
I never increased my coverage, even though I built a garage.
I'm actually guilty of that myself.
I built a garage and I didn't tell my agent. And she came over one day and she's
like, Amy, when did you get the garage?
Whoopsie. You know, that's probably the biggest thing. Talk to your agent.
When they send you that renewal notice that says, let's talk about your insurance,
(20:50):
do it. Talk about your insurance.
Yeah, it's your financial well-being. And it sounds like obviously the other
piece is just to have an agent. I mean, I really appreciate your honesty and
that those are things that you should know.
And I think as you've been talking, one of the things that really struck me
is insurance is something we interact with so infrequently.
(21:10):
It's hard to know and learn these lessons. I mean, these are things I think about,
like I check in maybe with my parents about because they had something like
this, or you talk to a friend or a coworker who's dealing with a flooded kitchen
and learning about what the insurance process was that they went through.
Like those sorts of things are really good learning opportunities.
(21:31):
And one of the reasons we want to have this episode is to at least get people
thinking and talking about that. I've already written down a list of notes of
things I need to go talk to my agent about, who I just happened to select because
he was a friend I went to high school with.
And when I bought a house, I knew I needed to get home insurance.
So I contacted the one person I knew that could help me with the insurance.
(21:52):
And that's as much shopping around as I did. And I think being able to have
these conversations and think about how are other people doing it?
And what can I learn from them on how I'm doing this as well?
Like we said earlier, this is why we have this podcast is to try to encourage
more of these types of conversations amongst people.
Yeah. And it goes back to why it's so wonderful that there is an office of the
(22:13):
insurance commissioner that people can go to for these particular resources.
So what is the web address for OIC? Great.
We have all kinds of resources on the web. We also have a live chat when we're
there Monday through Friday.
And we have a complaint form, ask a question form, and it's super easy.
(22:33):
It's insurance, I-N-S-U-R-A-N-C-E dot W-A, Washington, dot G-O-V,
gov. So insurance.wa.gov.
And then we also have a toll-free hotline. It's actually nationwide,
so we get lots of calls by mistake from other states, but it's 1-800-562-6900. zero, zero.
(22:59):
And the best thing I think about the hotline is you will always speak to somebody.
You're not going to get, we'll call you back in 10 days.
We have rate section in our consumer advocacy. We call them the crew section. They're just super.
And they answer all the calls and then they transfer to the experts.
And so you might call and you might speak to me if it's on home and auto or
(23:22):
business insurance, pet insurance, travel insurance, all the insurances.
That's great. And I want to make one more plug for the OIC Answers podcast.
It has been just a helpful way to learn about insurance in general.
I really appreciate that your office is doing that.
I'm sure wherever you find your podcast, wherever you're listening to this podcast,
you can go and find the Office of the Insurance Commissioners podcast as well.
(23:45):
Yes. So it's called OIC Answers on Insurance.
And I was going to ask, is it specifically for people in Washington state or
is it a general nationwide insurance podcast?
Yeah, so the podcast is for Washington state, you can certainly get information for other states.
The thing is, every state's laws are different.
And so it would be really general information if you were in another state,
(24:10):
but it's specific to Washington state. Perfect.
Yeah. All right, Amy, thanks. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you so much for the information.
I'm going to go have to shop around for an insurance. Right?
I know. And I might text my agent because I know actually my next renewal is
coming up here pretty soon.
So yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's been nice talking with you. Thank you.
(24:35):
Thanks for listening. And now we'd love to hear from you. What topics would you like to hear about?
What questions do you have for us? Send an email to drs.podcasts at drs.wa.gov.
That's DRS Podcasts at drs.wa.gov. The Department of Retirement Systems provides
this podcast as a public service, but it's neither a legal interpretation nor
(24:55):
a statement of DRS policy.
References to any specific product or entity do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program
does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by DRS employees are those of the employees and
do not necessarily reflect the view of DRS or any of its officials.
Music. Welcome back
(00:05):
To Fund Your Future with DRS. Today, we're covering a topic that can have small
and big impacts on your budget, insurance.
We've had several episodes regarding medical insurance, but today we're going
to focus on the other two big ones, auto insurance and home and slash renter's insurance.
And fortunately for us, the Office of the Insurance Commissioner,
(00:27):
or OIC for short, recently started a podcast all about insurance called OIC Answers on Insurance.
So we've reached out to their team to welcome a guest onto our show.
So we're happy to welcome Amy from OIC, who works in the Consumer Advocacy Division
to answer some of our burning insurance questions. Welcome, Amy.
(00:50):
Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Yeah.
Amy, thanks for joining us. This episode idea actually came from one of our
listeners who said, you know, insurance is a big part of their budget and wanted
to have some more conversations about this.
So just in research for this episode, I did some quick internet searching around
renter's insurance and home insurance in the state of Washington and found that
(01:13):
renter's insurance is somewhere around maybe $15 a month and homeowner's insurance
might be somewhere around $100 a month.
And I'm assuming that those amounts can vary widely depending on where you live
and what sort of residence you're insuring.
So what are the different types of policies a person would consider for their residence?
And what are the sort of things that are usually covered by insurance?
(01:35):
And what are the sort of things that are not covered by insurance?
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Happy to talk about that.
You're pretty close on the costs. It really does depend upon where your home
is located, if we're talking about homeowner's insurance, and the value of your
home, the construction of your home.
There's so much that goes into determining how much you're going to pay for
(01:59):
your insurance premium.
So with a homeowner's policy, your home is covered.
And most insurance companies, like your Allstate, State Farm,
Farmer's Insurance, those companies have what's called package policies.
Policies and they include the dwelling, other structures, your contents,
your liability, your loss of use.
So if you had a fire, say, and you had to live somewhere else for a period while it was being rebuilt.
(02:23):
The loss of use, and then it has also a guest medical coverage.
And that's a package and it all encompasses those different sections that you might need.
There are always exclusions and provisions within the policy that could change that.
So for instance, if you have jewelry or guns or furs or money,
(02:44):
those things actually have to be scheduled on your policy.
They're not automatically covered to the limit under your policy.
There are what we call special limits for those types of things.
Earthquakes not covered under a regular homeowner policy, that's something you'd have to add.
Floods not covered under, flood like from a river, is not covered under those policies.
(03:05):
Landslides, those kind of catastrophic things aren't covered under a standard homeowner policy.
And with the renter's policy, it's the same thing, minus the dwelling.
Everything else is covered. Your content, your liability, your guest medical,
and that loss of use as well.
I recommend folks get renter's insurance.
(03:25):
It's a really reasonable investment.
And people just don't realize that they have what contents.
So many people say, well, I don't have $10,000 worth of things.
You probably do just in your living room.
Yeah. So renter's insurance can cover those things like if your couch gets destroyed
or, you know, obviously if something like the refrigerator breaks,
(03:48):
you could charge that to your landlord.
But renter's insurance is a good thing for covering your furniture and like
you said, your personal belongings, right?
Right. And it also follows you. So any kind of insurance you have follows you.
So say you're on vacation, 10% of your coverage for your renters or your homeowner
for your contents is covered while you're away from your home on vacation.
(04:11):
Or if you have it in storage, if you have items in like a storage unit,
10% of that coverage for contents for home or renters is covered as well.
So there's actually a lot of things that people don't really think about,
out. Usually not until they need it is when they think about it.
That's awesome. I wanted to ask about bundling as well. A lot of these insurance
(04:32):
companies have these commercials where they talk about bundling,
but that's kind of what you were mentioning there was those package deals.
The bundling is, it's a really good thing. If you include more than one type
of insurance policy in the same insurance company, most, if not all companies
will give you a discount.
So if you have your home and auto in the same insurance company,
(04:53):
then you get a discount on your home and your auto.
It's called multiple policy discount. It's a good thing.
Sometimes you'll find though that your auto is super high or your home is with
that company and it doesn't benefit you to bundle them.
But I would always check to see if you can insure them together.
And it doesn't have to always be home and auto. It could be renters and auto.
(05:15):
It could be home and umbrella, which we could talk about a little bit later.
If you're interested, that's a liability coverage.
If you injure or damage somebody's property, that's your liability.
That's an umbrella policy. So it could be any or a boat policy or an RV policy.
As long as there's multiple policies together, that's a bundling and each policy
(05:35):
will experience a discount. And discounts are great today.
Discounts are, we need discounts.
I'm a coupon stopper and it's the same with insurance as far as I'm concerned.
And then we can talk a little bit about auto insurance.
That obviously depends on a lot of factors as well. Things like your age,
your driving history, the type of vehicle that you're driving.
(05:59):
What are some factors to consider when shopping for auto insurance? insurance.
Yeah. And right now auto insurance is really high.
We have a hotline through our agency. I work in the consumer advocacy department.
So I'm, I listened to a lot of consumer calls and concerns about things.
And so auto insurance right now is a hot topic mainly because it's expensive, right?
(06:21):
It's really expensive today. I don't know about you too, but I know when my
rates came in, mine increased, it increased substantially.
And so the one thing that I do say, especially with with auto insurance is shop around.
You know, it's, it's a product. I think we forget that insurance is a product
that we purchase that we are the customers for.
(06:45):
And so I suggest folks shop around for their auto insurance.
There's a lot of factors that go into it. If you have young drivers,
you're going to pay more money.
If you have accidents or tickets on your record, you're going to pay more money.
And then the different insurance companies look for different things.
So there's some companies that are really interested in insuring teachers, for instance.
And so they're They're going to gear their policies towards those teachers to
(07:09):
try and entice them to their program or to their policy.
And so shopping is a good thing.
Multiple vehicles on a policy is going to give you a discount.
I know it's kind of hard to believe.
Sometimes if you have two vehicles, it might be cheaper than having one vehicle. I know.
I know. I don't know how many times people have said, I'm going to take my vehicle
(07:29):
off and I'm going to save money. And I'm like, oh, you might lose a discount. Don't. won't.
So, you know, those are things that I have an insurance agent that I use.
I'm an insurance professional. I know more than my agent does.
However, I have an agent because I want that middleman. I want that person I
can talk to and say, Hey, my premium went up by a hundred dollars a month, shot my insurance.
(07:51):
She goes out, does her thing, tries to find me a better policy, can or can't.
And then I get to make an educated decision about what I'm going to do then.
And, you know, these are costs that they're not set.
We can't rely on, you know, it's going to be $500 a month or $100 a month or $200 a month.
It changes for auto every six months. And then for your home, it can change annually.
(08:14):
Yeah. So you're talking about an insurance agent who basically you have someone
who works as sort of like a neutral party and then they can go out and do the,
it sounds like the insurance shopping for you.
Absolutely. So our office also licenses the insurance agents.
They're now called producers, but we license the insurance agents.
And there are some insurance agents that only work with one insurance company.
(08:39):
And then there are some that work with multiple companies.
I'm an insurance expert, but I still use an agent because I want to have that
middleman. And I want to have that person who's looking out for me when I don't
have the time to look out for myself.
And so my agent, she's great. I text her in the middle of the night.
I'm sure she's like, Amy, please stop.
But I do. If I remember something in the middle of the night,
(09:01):
instead of trying to remember it tomorrow, I text my agent.
And I'm able to have that kind of relationship where she can tell me,
you know, this is what's coming down the pike. You might see a rate increase.
I like to have an agent in the middle, man. I look at it this way.
My insurance company is the big department store.
My agent is the salesperson. And that's who I'm talking to.
(09:24):
And I suggest it. There's some agents that will charge a fee.
I don't use an agent that charges a fee.
Because that was going to be my next question is, what is something like an insurance agent cost?
Except in your example, they're not actually working for the department store.
They're working for like multiple department stores, basically.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So the great thing about my agent, I want to say she
(09:46):
represents between 15 and 20 companies.
So imagine you either going on the phone, calling 15 or 20 companies to get quotes or online.
I forget online because online, then you get all these messages constantly,
but online, you know, going to all these companies instead of doing that,
I have one agent who will do that for me.
(10:08):
She'll go to those 15 or 20 companies, shop my insurance, present me to those
companies and whether or not I can get that better rate.
And I just prefer that. And I've done many times, I've done my own online shopping
and I still get emails from quotes I've done online from a year ago where they're
still, you know, and I'm not interested in that.
(10:29):
So you can check on our website to make sure they're licensed and who they represent.
And it's just, for me, it's a benefit that I will always use,
even though I'm an insurance expert. Yeah, so that's what I was going to ask.
If someone is looking for an
insurance agent like that, could they find a resource on the OIC website?
Yeah. On our website, we list all of the licensed agents and their status.
(10:53):
So you'll see how long they've been licensed, who they represent,
if they've had any complaints against them. It's all public record.
And to tell you the truth, the way I suggest people get an agent is talk to
your friends, see who they're using.
Word of mouth is the best advertising.
And I want to know if my friend next door is happy with their agent,
(11:13):
because we don't know until we actually have that relationship.
So I, I checked with my friends, this agent I have, I actually worked with her
when I was an agent 24 years ago.
So I already knew that I could rely on this person.
That's cool. I'm going to have to check that out now. I mean,
I feel like I have pretty good braids with my insurance company, but you never know.
(11:34):
Right. And that's the thing. So that's the other thing, you know,
we stay with a company, we have loyalty to a company and we're not quite sure,
you know, if we feel like, okay, this is in my budget, I can do this.
There's nothing wrong with checking to make sure. It's what we're in right now
is called a hard market. It just means things are really difficult. It just is.
But before that period, every time I shopped my insurance, I found a cheaper rate.
(11:57):
And for me, I'd like that. Like I said, I'm a coupon shopper. I want a cheaper rate.
So you mentioned that you listen to a lot of phone calls that come in or review
a lot of calls from Washington state residents about their insurance.
And I've I've actually learned a lot from listening to the OIC podcast about
what your office does and how it works.
But I'm curious, what sort of pitfalls do people run into when they're working
(12:22):
with their insurance companies?
Are there common mistakes that people make when filing a claim or when making
assumptions about their insurance?
Yeah, just curious from your perspective.
Yes. So I've been with the insurance commissioner's office for 22 years,
and I've been in this type of position.
I'm a senior compliance analyst.
(12:44):
And so what I do is look into complaints against insurance companies.
And I think really the greatest service I do is educating the public on their
rights and what they can do to advocate for themselves.
I think it's so important if we have knowledge, then we don't feel so afraid
to be able to advocate for ourselves.
The complaints we get are rates. The rates are going up. They're too high.
(13:07):
What do we do? Can they really increase my rates 70% those we also get I'd cancel
my policy and they haven't sent me a refund,
that's something we try and help with to get those to figure out what happened
or a lot of folks will contact us and say I think my agent's lying to me okay
we have a division for that or it might be a misunderstanding because a lot
(13:30):
of consumers can feel like the agent is the insurance company yeah.
That's not actually the case. Then they feel like when something happens that
they don't like that the agent's doing it rather than the insurance company.
Non-renewals. Right now with wildfires going on in Eastern Washington,
there's a lot of companies that are either not writing new homeowner policies
(13:51):
or they're non-renewing homeowner policies because of those wildfires. We talk a lot about that.
For me, it's super important to hear what's going on in the market today because
our office does review insurance companies to see what's going on,
make sure they're doing the things they're supposed to.
But in real time, when somebody calls me and says, my insurance company did
this, if it's something that I think needs to be looked into,
(14:15):
I'll contact the company.
I'll ask them what they did, why
they did it, and make sure that they're following the laws of our state.
We have RCW 48 is the insurance laws.
And then the insurance rules are WAC, Washington Administrative Code 284.
And so those are the things that we look at to make sure insurance companies
are doing the things they're supposed to.
(14:36):
You mentioned umbrella insurance. And I think the person who brought the idea
of doing an episode about insurance,
I think that was part of kind of where their questions were coming up about
how do I know if I'm underinsured or overinsured kind of just as a human being?
I don't know if that's the right way to say it, But it's definitely something
people think about when they think about their overall finances.
(15:00):
And that's what we talk about a lot in our podcast is kind of overall personal
finance. And do I have enough insurance? Am I paying too much for insurance?
Do I not have enough insurance? Like, I'm just curious what your thoughts are
on umbrella policies and how they work and why somebody might consider one or not.
Sure. Yeah. So the thing is, we don't give advice. So I'm not a financial advisor.
(15:22):
So I'm not going to tell somebody you should do this, this and that.
However, I would say that if you have the assets that should be protected in
the event that something happens, that's what an umbrella liability policy can do for you.
So when you have your homeowner's insurance, you have that liability we talked about.
And that is if you damage somebody's property, if you injure somebody by mistake,
(15:47):
your kid does something and damages somebody's property, that's all covered
under your homeowner liability.
And then under your auto insurance, you're in an auto accident,
you rear end somebody, you know, they get whiplash, that's your liability.
And so with those two coverages, your home and your auto, it depends upon how
(16:07):
much insurance coverage you are carrying.
But in order to have an umbrella, which goes over the top of those two,
you'd have to carry a certain limit of liability.
It's usually around $250,000 on each policy, your auto and your home.
And then the umbrella is normally a million dollars and they're cheap.
They're just cheap. You know, most companies, you can get a million dollar umbrella for $150 a year.
(16:33):
It depends. It depends upon your exposure. If you have kids that are driving,
bigger exposure, right?
You have more liability, more expensive umbrella. So, and those things are all
taken into consideration.
If you have, you know, I have RVs and you have all terrain vehicles and you
have boats and you have rental houses and you have, you know,
(16:55):
the more things you have, the more assets you have, the more you could lose,
the more liability you might want.
And that's when you think about whether or not you want an umbrella.
I think an umbrella is a great thing.
A lot of times folks mistake it for coverage for themselves when in fact it
is coverage for you, but it's coverage to protect you against a lawsuit where
(17:20):
you might lose your assets.
It's not something you can get because your house burned to the ground and you
have a million dollar umbrella. That's not what it's for.
It's for that liability where you've injured or damaged somebody,
and now they might sue you to recover those damages or that injury.
In something beyond what my homeowner policy or my auto policy would cover.
(17:45):
Okay, that's really helpful context.
Let me just say really quick, I have, in my time with the insurance commissioner's
office, had many, many calls from folks.
And we think, oh my gosh, a million dollars, that's a lot of money.
Annie, I just spoke to somebody who was in an accident and their injury is over a million dollars.
That's just their injury, just their treatment, their life flight, their hospital.
(18:10):
That's just their treatment. And so if I damage somebody and I have my 250,000
liability on my auto, and then I have my million umbrella, they're still not
made whole because that just paid their medical bills.
It didn't pay for their pain and suffering, their inability to live life the
way they normally live life.
So it's really not as great as it used to be, I'd say.
(18:34):
So that's why I don't think it's a bad thing. And I think it's something that folks should consider.
Yeah, this is all really great information. And Amy, what do you wish is the
one thing that people knew about insurance?
There's a couple things, right? Like I was saying, I really advocate for folks having knowledge.
I can tell you that one thing with homeowner insurance is we pay into insurance
(18:59):
And we expect that when something happens, it's going to be covered.
And that's not always the case because there's some things that aren't covered.
And we just have to know that we have to look at our policies.
Like you said, earthquakes and floods are a big one.
Floods from natural disasters. Or if my hot water heater has been leaking for
a month and I didn't know it, it's not covered.
(19:20):
And a lot of folks don't know that. And I've seen some instances where folks
have had no coverage because they weren't aware something happened and it's
just not covered under a homeowner policy.
So I wish folks had a better way of getting more information about how the policies
work. It's not an easy thing.
Insurance policies are legal language. They're not black and white ABC little kid can understand.
(19:45):
And like I said, I'm guilty of it too. When I get that renewal,
sometimes I look, sometimes I don't. sometimes I just look to see what the price
is, but it's so important that we review those things and we go to our agent.
When that agent emails you or texts you or calls you and says,
let's review, review, do it.
I went to the Eastern Washington fires, the medical lake fires.
(20:08):
It was the Gray fires and the Oregon fires.
And I've never experienced this, not in my 22 years in regulation.
Every single person I spoke to was underinsured. Wow.
Everyone. So 100% underinsured. And a lot of folks said, I never spoke to my
agent. I never did the reviews.
(20:29):
I never increased my coverage, even though I built a garage.
I'm actually guilty of that myself.
I built a garage and I didn't tell my agent. And she came over one day and she's
like, Amy, when did you get the garage?
Whoopsie. You know, that's probably the biggest thing. Talk to your agent.
When they send you that renewal notice that says, let's talk about your insurance,
(20:50):
do it. Talk about your insurance.
Yeah, it's your financial well-being. And it sounds like obviously the other
piece is just to have an agent. I mean, I really appreciate your honesty and
that those are things that you should know.
And I think as you've been talking, one of the things that really struck me
is insurance is something we interact with so infrequently.
(21:10):
It's hard to know and learn these lessons. I mean, these are things I think about,
like I check in maybe with my parents about because they had something like
this, or you talk to a friend or a coworker who's dealing with a flooded kitchen
and learning about what the insurance process was that they went through.
Like those sorts of things are really good learning opportunities.
(21:31):
And one of the reasons we want to have this episode is to at least get people
thinking and talking about that. I've already written down a list of notes of
things I need to go talk to my agent about, who I just happened to select because
he was a friend I went to high school with.
And when I bought a house, I knew I needed to get home insurance.
So I contacted the one person I knew that could help me with the insurance.
(21:52):
And that's as much shopping around as I did. And I think being able to have
these conversations and think about how are other people doing it?
And what can I learn from them on how I'm doing this as well?
Like we said earlier, this is why we have this podcast is to try to encourage
more of these types of conversations amongst people.
Yeah. And it goes back to why it's so wonderful that there is an office of the
(22:13):
insurance commissioner that people can go to for these particular resources.
So what is the web address for OIC? Great.
We have all kinds of resources on the web. We also have a live chat when we're
there Monday through Friday.
And we have a complaint form, ask a question form, and it's super easy.
(22:33):
It's insurance, I-N-S-U-R-A-N-C-E dot W-A, Washington, dot G-O-V,
gov. So insurance.wa.gov.
And then we also have a toll-free hotline. It's actually nationwide,
so we get lots of calls by mistake from other states, but it's 1-800-562-6900. zero, zero.
(22:59):
And the best thing I think about the hotline is you will always speak to somebody.
You're not going to get, we'll call you back in 10 days.
We have rate section in our consumer advocacy. We call them the crew section. They're just super.
And they answer all the calls and then they transfer to the experts.
And so you might call and you might speak to me if it's on home and auto or
(23:22):
business insurance, pet insurance, travel insurance, all the insurances.
That's great. And I want to make one more plug for the OIC Answers podcast.
It has been just a helpful way to learn about insurance in general.
I really appreciate that your office is doing that.
I'm sure wherever you find your podcast, wherever you're listening to this podcast,
you can go and find the Office of the Insurance Commissioners podcast as well.
(23:45):
Yes. So it's called OIC Answers on Insurance.
And I was going to ask, is it specifically for people in Washington state or
is it a general nationwide insurance podcast?
Yeah, so the podcast is for Washington state, you can certainly get information for other states.
The thing is, every state's laws are different.
And so it would be really general information if you were in another state,
(24:10):
but it's specific to Washington state. Perfect.
Yeah. All right, Amy, thanks. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you so much for the information.
I'm going to go have to shop around for an insurance. Right?
I know. And I might text my agent because I know actually my next renewal is
coming up here pretty soon.
So yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's been nice talking with you. Thank you.
(24:35):
Thanks for listening. And now we'd love to hear from you. What topics would you like to hear about?
What questions do you have for us? Send an email to drs.podcasts at drs.wa.gov.
That's DRS Podcasts at drs.wa.gov. The Department of Retirement Systems provides
this podcast as a public service, but it's neither a legal interpretation nor
(24:55):
a statement of DRS policy.
References to any specific product or entity do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation.
The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program
does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent.
Views and opinions expressed by DRS employees are those of the employees and
do not necessarily reflect the view of DRS or any of its officials.
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