Sharpening Focus On Insurance Premiums

Saturday, Jul 11,2009, 11:11:42 AM Click:

Debbie Shempert, senior vice president and operations manager for Renasant Insurance in Tupelo, said her office has been besieged with policyholders looking to save a few dollars on premiums. FULL TEXT

Jackson resident Johnston Walker recently went insurance shopping in an effort to lower his homeowners premium.

Secure in his employment as an attorney, Walker, 32, was not desperate to cut a better deal, but figured it was worth a shot anyway.

"I thought I'd look around just to see what I could come up with," he said.

What he found was that if he kept his car and flood policies with his existing company, but switched his homeowners to another, he could save what he called "enough to make it worth it."

With the economy like it is, more and more people are sharpening their focus on their insurance premiums to see if at least a small amount of savings can be wrung out of them.

"In this economy, everybody seems to be looking for the best deal. We've had a lot of that going on," said Angelyn Treutel, of Treutel Insurance Agency in Bay St. Louis and president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Mississippi.

It makes good sense for consumers to beat the bushes for the best deal on a policy or a combination of policies, Treutel said.

While the price of a premium is at the forefront of such efforts, Treutel warns that should not be the only factor in making a decision. Every automobile and home has specific needs as far as coverage, and there is no one-size-fits-all policy.

"Insurance can be a very complicated product, so you need to make sure you're getting good advice on what you're purchasing," she said. "Everybody kind of got the impression that you can get a box of insurance and that's just not the case."

Something every good policy should have is a replacement-cost stipulation, rather than one centered on actual cash value.

For example, if an automobile is totaled in a wreck, the consumer wants to collect on the full cost of replacing the vehicle, not just on the amount of the depreciated value or on the amount of the loan.

"You want to make sure you're protecting the asset and not the bank," Treutel said. "A home, in particular, your mortgage is going to be less then the value of the home. You don't want to protect the bank. That's something a good agent can tell you about."

An insurance shopper should have lots of questions about the different policies carriers offer. One of them should be whether the independent agent or writer is financially sound enough to pay a claim.

"There are good ways to do it, and you can save money," Treutel said.

Debbie Shempert, senior vice president and operations manager for Renasant Insurance in Tupelo, said her office has been besieged with policyholders looking to save a few dollars on premiums.

"On our commercial side, with our business insurance, most of those people are looking at higher deductibles and those kind of things," she said. "In our personal line, with home and auto coverage, we are doing a lot of shopping and rewriting (policies). As an independent agent, we represent a lot of companies. Our clients are calling in and asking us what we suggest to lower their insurance, or asking us if we can shop them with another company. Some will get a quote from a direct writer and then call us and see if we can do better. Even if we can't, people are asking us to try."

That kind of activity has picked up, Shempert said, in the last year as the economy has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs per month and people are forced to evaluate their own job security and regular expenses.

"We have seen a lot of that," Shempert said. "We never want people to reduce coverage as far as limits of liability or home value because they need to be insured to value, but we are raising a lot of deductibles."