It can manifest itself in terms of an insured party’s upkeep of its property, its Aside from the moral hazard, the physical condition and location of a property can also provide insight into the nature of a given risk. We can generally price for most of these factors. In much the same way as a life insurer can predict death rates from mortality tables, we can reasonably predict our losses based on the history of our book of business and the nature of the policyholder.

The one thing we can’t predict is what Mother Nature is or isn’t going to do to us in a given year. We do know, however, what she’s done to us on average over time; so, we build our premium rate levels and our business forecasts based on historical weather loss averages. When weather is better than average, we benefit, and when it’s worse than average, we come up short. When we benefit, it’s reflected in our premium rate levels, either in the form of rate decreases or in the form of lesser rate increases.

When we come up short, likewise, it’s reflected in our premium rate levels in the form of increased rates to absorb the impact of excessive weather. Weather can include anything from tornadoes to floods, hurricanes, snowstorms, ice storms and more. We insure a lot of manufactured housing and low-valued housing, principally, property risks. When Mother Nature decides to get ugly, it impacts our book of business. We tend to live with the Weather Channel in the spring and summer months.

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Our internal claims staff receives a notice of loss and assigns the loss to an adjuster for review. Our company handles 94 percent of our claims with our own staff, either by desk adjustment out of our home office or by a field claims settlement with one of our field staff adjusters that are located across the country. Since we offer specialty personal lines products, it’s particularly important to us that we use our own staff. A manufactured home is not the same as a conventional home. Our adjusters need to understand the unique construction differences between the two and adjust the loss accordingly.

The loss is assigned to an adjuster, who is typically one of our employees but occasionally, where we don’t have enough business to support a staff person, an independent third party. The adjuster then makes contact with the customer and arranges a time to get together and inspect the loss. The adjuster performs a loss assessment and begins to prepare an estimate of the damage. He or she applies the applicable coverage, terms and conditions and the policy deductible, if there is one, and arrange to pay the claim.

In our case, we settle 90 percent of our claims within thirty days of when they are reported, and a great many of our claims are settled on our first contact with the insured. These are significant points of differentiation for our company vis-a-vis our competitors. A lot of companies write mobile homeowners insurance, but few of them have staff adjusters who are uniquely trained in handling mobile home claims the way our people are.