Universal wants to officially drop DUI, disorderly conduct arrests as reasons to deny home insurance
Although those eligibility restrictions -- plus others left over from a contentious period in the company's history -- haven't been used for several years, they are still part of Universal's policy program manual provided to homeowners, according to spokesman
Now, the
If approved, the changes would take effect for new and renewing customers on
Other disqualifiers that would be dropped from the new manual include:
An arrest on charges of assault and battery.
An arrest on charges of disorderly conduct.
Eligibility for the most common types of policies would no longer be barred for:
A lien or judgment over the past 60 months.
A repossession over the past 60 months.
Universal is the state's largest insurer with 631,611
The criteria date back to a troubled era in the company's history that resulted in an investigation and a
A notice by former Chief Operating Officer
In 2012,
Wescott called the so-called, post-claim underwriting "abusive" and "an unfair trade practice."
The state's probe found the company canceled 262 policies over a 15-month period in 2010-11 without giving customers 100 days' notice, as required by state law. Its report said the cancellations left customers as uninsurable risks, subject to being force-placed by their mortgage lenders into expensive last-resort policies. In addition to the
Universal's decision to change its culture followed the 2013 state report and fine and predated a 2014 change in state law barring insurers from denying claims based on publicly available credit information after a policy has been in effect for 90 days, Miller said.
The company decided to stop using credit information to determine eligibility, Miller said. "Around the same time, UPCIC also decided it would no longer consider certain non-credit issues such as DUIs, assaults and batteries and suspended driver licenses," he said.
As with every insurer, the company maintains eligibility criteria that can disqualify applicants, including:
Having a felony conviction in the past 10 years.
Having a first-party lawsuit against an auto or homeowner insurance company.
Having previously been convicted of arson or insurance fraud.
A bankruptcy filing or foreclosure judgment would bar eligibility for the most common types of insurance, but applicants may be eligible for what some experts consider a stripped-down policy that would reimburse losses for their actual cash value, and not replacement cost.
"I think they realized that it's good business and not just the right thing to do [and] they recognize that if anything smells like 'gotcha,' it doesn't belong," he said.
Added
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