What We Offer
You see the oddest things walking the streets of New York City. Two weeks ago, I found myself in NYC for a few days. In theory, we were there to watch the Yankees beat up the Red Sox. My wife is a huge fan. Sure, I was there for the baseball, but also for the food and the people-watching, which is always spectacular there. Have you ever watched a dog walker untangling himself and eight dogs from a street sign on a busy sidewalk, with a doorman telling him to move along from the front of the building? It is something to behold. After lunch, we took a walk through Central Park West while I enjoyed a nice cigar. Sitting on a bench for a while, soaking in the sunshine in the patch of nature amongst the tall buildings and traffic, we counted all the blue, red, pink, and orange hair walking by. It was fun. Watching people walking and texting on their phones added excitement, waiting for one of them to walk into another person, tree, or bench. As we emerged from the park, I stopped to buy a Dr. Pepper from a street cart vendor. He got rather annoyed when I said, "You joking? Five bucks for a soda?" He barked, "YEAH... do ya wan' it?" I thought, "If you're going to bend me over, shouldn't I at least get a kiss?" This got me thinking about how crazy expensive everything is these days, including insurance. I did a quick check recently and found that there were over 115 double-digit rate increases averaging 19.8% filed for 2023. There have been another 162 double-digit rate increases averaging 19.2% filed for 2024, many of which were from the same companies that filed those 2023 rate increases. That averages to an increase of 43% in two years. Ouch! That hurts! Where's the kiss for you and your customers? I can't imagine how much frustration your customers are facing with these price increases. Sadly, I'm sure a lot of their frustration is taken out on you. You and your team are working harder than ever to help your frustrated or angry customers… searching for a lower price, a lower deductible, or coverage at all. While you may not be feeling the love from your other carriers, we would like to send some your way. We THANK YOU very much! We really appreciate all your efforts. We've been truly lucky. Our strategy of picking our spots and sticking to it has worked well. We have NOT increased our rates in a couple of years, while we are growing nicely, thanks to our agency partners' support. While agents in the greater DFW and Harris County areas don't appreciate our strategy of renters-only in those areas, it has allowed us to be profitable in the rest of the state, where we do write all of our products. So, we continue to stick with our plan with those agents who brought us to the dance. We hope that we are able to help you and your team with your customers' needs. We strive to provide you with great, friendly, and prompt service. We are here to help you succeed. Please feel free to contact anyone on our team with any questions or issues that you may have. You can reach underwriting at 512-494-4161… Matt ext. 12, Ramy ext. 16, and Operations… Debra ext. 10. Again, we thank you for all the hard work that you do. We hope that we can be of help to you and your team!
In the classic words of Dorthy in The Wizard of Oz..."lions and tigers and bears" were the scary animals that could be lurking along their path to the Emerald City. Well, insurance companies seem to be fearful of asbestos and metal siding, PPCs 8s, 9s, and 10s, older homes, and a whole bunch of other things these days. Good News! We are not scared of these kind of houses. In fact, we write them all of the time. After my last email about loving older homes, I had several calls and emails from agents happy that we are a welcoming market for older homes. They also asked questions about other things that we might write while talking about their other insurance companies. The themes were very similar ranging from rates are high and going up, deductibles are increasing, markets no longer writing metal and asbestos siding, unprotected risks being non-renewed or penalized for volunteer fire departments, super picky about credit scores etc. etc. More Good News! We did NOT raise our rates in 2022, and will NOT be raising our rates in 2023. We do NOT penalize a community with higher rates just because they have a volunteer fire department. We do NOT use credit scores in our rating. Plus, we like older homes and write unprotected homes all the time. When writing older homes, remember to add updates. Updates allow us to lower our rate depending on the updates that were done, and when they were done. So, PLEASE remember to ask your clients about updates, and enter them into the quote. You and your clients will be very happy that you did. If you haven't quoted us in a while, please give us a try. It is quick and easy to quote and bind a policy with us. If you have any questions or need any help, please reach out to us at (512) 494-4164 or through our Contact Page .
You must love older houses as much as we do! Why? Because, 1972 was the average age of the houses that we wrote new in December making December 2022 our biggest new business December since 2015! Since the average age of the houses last month was 50, we are taking that as proof that 50 is the new 20. Just saying it makes me feel younger! So, a Big Thank You for helping us end the year in a great way!! With fewer markets writing older homes and everyone (except us) raising rates, we reminded you last month that we love to write older, smaller, in town, or rural homes and dwellings. And boy oh boy, you all crushed it by writing a whole bunch of them! Heck, December was also our biggest over all new business month since September of 2017. We write all ages of homes, rental dwellings, and mobile homes. We write a lot of homes in large cities and towns, but we also have a large chunk of our book in small towns, and very rural areas around the state. We use AAIS fire protection codes, not ISO, because AAIS puts more emphasis on the distance to a fire hydrant and the fire station (regardless of volunteer or paid). This often helps lower the sometimes large difference for properties out of town, or in smaller towns vs those in larger towns. Here is summary information of the new policies that we wrote in December.
