Talk about it Wednesday? It’s convention week for our friends at the PIA AR Convention in Hot Springs AR, so we’re a little off schedule. Check out what Convention Week means and why it is important.
Talk About It Tuesday: PIA AR Convention
Talk About It Tuesday: Three Things Your Agent Wishes You Knew
This week’s video topic for Talk About It Tuesday is Three Things Your Agent Wishes You Knew. Holden goes over three key things that often times happens with your insurance that you should be aware of.
Talk About It Tuesday: Disaster Preparedness
This week’s video topic is Disaster Preparedness. We wanted to give you some things to think about as our area in Northeast Arkansas prepares for another round of bad weather. Stay safe everyone!
Talk About It Tuesday: Permanent Life Insurance
This week’s video topic is Permanent Life Insurance. Permanent Life Insurance, or whole life insurance, is a life insurance policy which is guaranteed to remain in force for the insured’s entire lifetime, provided required premiums are paid, or to the maturity date. Holden provides examples and scenarios depicting when and why this could be the type of life insurance for you and your family.
Talk About It Tuesday: Term Life Insurance
This week’s video topic is Term Life Insurance. Term life insurance provides coverage at a fixed rate of payments for a limited period of time. Holden provides examples and scenarios depicting when and why term life insurance could be the type of life insurance for you and your family.
Talk About It Tuesday: Life Insurance
This week’s video topic for Talk About It Tuesday is Life Insurance. Holden explains the basics of Life Insurance, the various types, as well as when and why everyone NEEDS it. He will continue to discuss Life Insurance over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!
Talk About It Tuesday: Minimize Claims…Minimize Rate
Talk about it Tuesday is a little different today! Weather and kids and what not kept us from our normal Tuesday video. We are working remotely due to ice on the roads, so today’s video is short and sweet! Stay safe, stay warm and stay off the roads – unless you have to be out and about!
Talk About it Tuesday: Rate Increases
This week’s Talk About It Tuesday video topic is Rate Increases. As with the price of everything else on the rise, so are a lot of people’s insurance rates. We want you to have real facts so that you better understand what influences rate changes. We hope you enjoy the video and learn something new!
5 Rules Every Landlord Should Live By
I’m pretty confident that if you asked anyone who has ever owned a rental property you would get an overwhelming response that it’s not as lucrative or easy as they thought it would be. In fact, owning a rental property can be a major pain, and end up costing you a ton of money!
I certainly don’t mean to be a “Debbie Downer”, and I know that if it’s done right it can be lucrative, but from an insurance agent’s perspective, I don’t see a lot of people doing it right.
So you’re probably thinking, “Well Chris, you are an insurance agent. What do you know about real estate or rental properties? Why should I take advice from you?”
I’m not a real estate agent, and I don’t own a rental property. However, several of my friends/family/clients/co-workers own rentals, and because I insure a bunch of their properties, I’ve had a first hand account of the process, and I’ve learned what to do, and what not to do.
Will my credit rating change my insurance rates?
I was recently asked this question by one of our Lennox Insurance clients, and thought I would share the answer here for our readers.
There are a lot of things that go into homeowners and auto insurance rates, one of them being credit. I’ve heard a lot of complaints from people who don’t like the fact that insurance companies use credit in their underwriting.
Some people have absolutely no idea that it’s used in the rate at all.
At the end of the day, there’s not much we can do about it though. Insurance companies have been using credit in their rates for decades, and that’s not likely to change.
By the way, insurance companies don’t pull your credit like a mortgage company or credit card company does. There is no negative impact on your credit as a result of an insurance company looking at it.
When I say “pull” what I mean is that the insurance company is doing what’s called a soft inquiry, which is not the same thing as having your credit pulled (hard inquiry).
When does credit play a role in insurance rates?
It’s important to understand that insurance companies don’t continuously check or monitor your credit. Usually, they only check it when you first get a quote and/or sign up with them in the very beginning.
This means that if your credit score increases (or decreases) your insurance company does not automatically know about it.
So, to my customers question of whether or not his increased credit score will lower his rates, the answer is not automatically.
What has to be done on our side as the agent is contact the carrier the insurance and ask them to do what’s commonly referred to as a “re-score”. This is when the insurance company can re-run the person’s credit (soft inquiry) to see if there is any positive bearing on the rate.
This isn’t something that the insurance company is going to let the agency do every single year, so it’s not worth even asking unless there has been a significant change in your credit score, and only you as the customer would know if that was the case.
If you’d like to get a better handle on your credit rating, it could be helpful to setup credit monitoring. We hope this was helpful! As always, leave us comment below if you have any questions.