Will my insurance premiums go up if I file a claim?

No, your insurance premiums can never go up because you simply filed a claim because of a

weather-related event. It is actually illegal for an insurance company to raise rates simply because a

claim was filed or approved due to weather-related events. Weather-related events are what we call

“acts of God”, acts of God are outside of anyone’s control, which means you can’t be held responsible

for something you cannot control. Unfortunately, this law only prevents insurance companies from

singling out homeowners whose homes have been affected by a weather-related event. What does this mean?

It means insurance companies can raise rates by zip code! For example, let us say that a hailstorm

hits O’Fallon, Missouri but the hailstorm only damaged half of the homes in O’Fallon with a 63368 zip

code; now for this example it is important to note that O’Fallon, MO has 2 different zip codes, 63368

and 63366. So let’s say not a single one of those homeowners, of the homeowners with a 63368 zip

code and remember only half of those homes in that 63368 zip code were damaged by the storm – so

even if a single homeowner that has a hail damaged home chooses to not file a claim with their

respective insurance carriers, the insurance carriers can still raise the rates of every homeowner in

that 63368 zip code. Remember when I mentioned that O’Fallon, MO has 2 different zip codes? Yep,

you guessed it, the insurance carriers can raise the rates of everyone with a 63366 zip code too.

They can even raise the rates of adjacent zip codes that are for a different city, like Lake Saint Louis, MO, which has a 63367 zip code!

You may have even experienced this yourself! Can you recall a time when you got your insurance bill,

you found out that your premium went up a little bit, which you thought to be strange because you

never filed a claim? Well, it’s more than likely that homes close to where you live probably got damaged by a storm.

Now keep in mind the keyword in the example that I provided above is can because it isn’t certain

that insurance carriers will always do this. Many factors come into play here, the frequency of storms

that occur in a geographical area, what type of storms they are, the level of severity of the storms,

and even the insurance companies themselves; they can differ quite a bit when it comes to their business practices and policies.