Thread

1. sib · 1790706977 · focus · HN ↗

   "Did you know that home insurers use aerial drones to study your rooftop? If the conditions signal neglect, they might cancel your coverage before an accident."

   While there are certainly some issues of concern in the article and the reviewed book, the above seems like exactly what insurance companies should be doing: pricing (or making available) coverage based upon risk.

   This is not much different from an auto insurance company raising your rates (or cancelling coverage) because you've received a number of speeding tickets, which implies increased future risk of loss.

   In fact, I received a letter from my homeowners insurance company a couple years ago stating that they would not renew our coverage due to conditions that they'd observed (clearly from aerial imagery) including overgrown bushes touching the walls of the house and some larger tree branches growing over the house.

   I had a landscaping company come and fix the issues, sent my own drone up to take new pictures, sent the company the pictures, and they agreed to continue coverage. And now my house has less future risk of damage. This seems like a win-win for both of us.

   1. curiouscavalier · 1790709936 · focus · HN ↗

      The issue is that often the data gathered and used with no consideration of other evidence. For example, I had a similar situation of home insurance sending a letter demanding I replace my roof based on drone footage. No issue was immediately obvious from the footage and we had just replaced the roof less than 5 years earlier. We had an inspection done and then sent both proof of replacement and the inspection report. We were told the drone footage alone would be used in their decision, and we still had to replace the roof to keep coverage.

      So it is not necessarily objective, fairly considered observations (and I think pretty different from speeding tickets). At least in our case it was maximally for the benefit of the insurer. I think that is relevant to their claimed premise.

      1. wat10000 · 1790714382 · focus · HN ↗

         Insurance is fundamentally lopsided in the risk of a bad decision by the insurer. They have little incentive to keep you as a customer, since the potential profit is just not that big. And thus they have little incentive to do a thorough investigation of potential problems. It's just not worth it. They'd rather dump you, or risk forcing you to replace a perfectly good roof, than put effort into determining whether their report is accurate.

         It's a funny business. Every insurer wants better risk assessment, since it's a competitive advantage. At the same time, the better the risk assessment gets, the less point there is to having insurance in the first place. At the limit, insurers that could accurately predict the future would charge you premiums equal to your actual future costs and you might as well just put the premiums in a savings account instead.

         1. SoftTalker · 1790726085 · focus · HN ↗

            Just switch to a better insurer. Unlike health insurance, homeowners insurance is available from a huge number of providers that are all in a competitive market, and you can go with a big name like State Farm or go to an independent agent and shop the market.

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