Insurance Tips

For far too long, Texans have been paying too much for their insurance while their coverage has been continually whittled away. It is time for our lawmakers to enact real insurance reforms that bring rates down, improve insurance accountability, and give homeowners a fair marketplace.

On this Insurance Tips page, we have compiled a number of important and key resources for those affected by this issue.

Has your insurance company jacked up your rates, delayed your claims, or treated you unfairly? Please share your story with us.

Quick Links: Insurance Tips | Insurance Credit Scoring Tips

Insurance Tips

  • Insurance Activist Training Kit: Texas Watch has created an insurance activist training kit that contains helpful information about the issue and how you can get involved.
  • Homeowners’ Insurance Inventory List: Texas Watch has come up with a comprehensive homeowners’ insurance inventory list that will help you take a detailed inventory of your home in case of a future insurance claim.
  • Homeowners’ Insurance Bill of Rights: Be informed of your rights! As a policyholder, you have certain rights in relation to your insurance company. The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) has Residential Property and Auto Insurance Bills of Rights available for you to read.
  • After a Disaster: Tips for dealing with your insurance company in the wake of a natural disaster from Texas Watch and Americans for Insurance Reform.
  • Texas Watch Policy Goals & Initiatives: This document contains detailed information on our prescriptions for needed reforms for the Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) and the insurance market.

Helpful Links
The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) is the state agency in charge of overseeing the insurance market in Texas.  To ask any questions about an insurance policy or to make a formal complaint about an insurance company, you need to call their Consumer Helpline at 1-800-252-3439 or fill out the online complaint form.

TDI also has a Coastal Texans, Storms & Disaster section on their website with emergency resources (such as their detailed StormLink page), and windstorm inspection information, forms and other links.

The Office of Public Insurance Council (OPIC) is the state agency charged with representing the interests of consumers in the insurance market.  They can be reached in Austin at 1-512-322-4143.  OPIC also has a Coastal Consumers page with brochures for coastal residents, notices and other important information.

OPIC currently has a free mediation program for victims of Hurricane Ike who had AAA, Farmers, or Allstate insurance and meet other requirements.  Contact their office for more information.

Helpinsure.com is a free service organized by TDI and OPIC to help Texans compare and shop for auto and residential property insurance.  Check it out!

The office of the Attorney General of Texas also helps enforce consumer regulations.  Their consumer protection page is chock full of information on a wide variety of consumer issues including insurance, disaster scams, Medicaid fraud and more.  To file a consumer complaint you can call their “Consumer Protection Hotline” at 1-800-621-0508, or use their online complaint form.

Insurance Credit Scoring Tips

Credit Scoring is a method used by creditors to decide if a consumer is a good risk and whether to grant them credit.  Credit scoring is also used to establish the terms and rate of the loan.  To generate a consumer’s credit score, the creditor collects information from your credit report (a report summarizing your history of accessing credit and paying debts and bills) and runs it through a secret industry formula that calculates a numerical score.

The vast majority of insurance companies have also begun to use insurance credit scoring to determine eligibility and rates for homeowners and auto insurance.  This insurance credit score is different from the credit score used by banks or lenders to determine credit worthiness.  Insurance companies claim that they possess formulas that draw a cause-and-effect link between your credit history and your insurance risk.  However, this logic is clearly flawed.  How is a person who paid a bill late once, for example, any more likely to be hit by another driver or to have a hailstorm ruin their roof?

At Texas Watch, we believe that insurance credit scoring is a flawed tool used by insurance companies to unfairly deny coverage and increase rates.  It is also discriminatory.  Study after study has shown that credit scoring has a disproportionately negative impact on people with lower incomes, senior citizens, those who have experienced a medical bankruptcy, and racial minorities.

Helpful Links
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a great resource for information on credit scoring and reports.  Their main Credit Reports and Scoring page contains a number of informative reports.  Also, check out their How to Dispute Credit Report Errors fact sheet. To file a complaint or to get free information on consumer issues, you can contact the FTC toll-free at 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).

The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) has a Credit Information Resource Page with useful information on:

  • Credit scoring
  • The legislatively-mandated study conducted by TDI on the use and impact of credit scoring in Texas
  • A list of insurance companies in Texas that use credit information to help determine rates

Consumers Union’s Your Credit Matters page contains helpful information on how to obtain your credit report.

insurancescored.com is a website created by a victim of insurance credit scoring that explains the practice and why it is bad for consumers.

How to Obtain Your Credit Report

As mentioned above, your credit report (a report summarizing your history of accessing credit and paying debts and bills) is used to determine your final credit score. In this way, it is important to make sure that the information contained in your credit report is correct.

As a result of the 2003 Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) passed by Congress, US consumers now have the right to request one free copy of their credit report a year from each credit reporting agency.  There are a numbers of ways consumers can access this information.

Online: Annualcreditreport.com is the ONLY official website on which to order your free credit reports.  Many other similar-looking websites have sprung up that claim to offer these services.  However, be wary of these sites, as some may trick you into signing up for a for-cost service.

By  phone: Call (877) 322-8228.

By mail: Fill out the “Annual Credit Report Request Form” and mail it to

Annual Credit Report Request Service
P.O. Box 105281
Atlanta, GA  30348-5281

How to Obtain Your C.L.U.E Report

A personal property or auto C.L.U.E. (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) report contains information provided by insurance companies on a consumer’s claims history and details about the covered property.  It is used in insurance underwriting and rate setting.  The report often contains errors, so it is important to make sure that yours is correct.  To order a copy of your C.L.U.E. report (which is also free once a year, as a result of the FACT Act), click here.

How to Purchase Your Credit Score

The credit reports discussed above do not contain your consumer credit score which lenders use to determine credit worthiness.  To obtain your credit score, you must purchase it from the credit reporting agency. The websites for the three major agencies are:

All three websites also have a way to purchase all three companies’ credit scores at the same time.

  • myfico.com.  This is a website from the company that invented the FICO credit score, the credit scoring system used by the vast majority of lenders.  On the website, you can purchase both TransUnion and Equifax credit scores.
Research & Reports
Research & Reports

The Texas Watch Foundation, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization, conducts research and public education activities on consumer law, consumer protection and civil justice issues. Read More »

Court Watch
Court Watch

Court Watch, a program of the Foundation, documents the role and impact of the Texas civil court system on Texas families and Texas public policy. Read More »