Home Inventories, Insurance Awareness Should Be Top Priorities: Allstate

Americans know that they and their homes could be impacted by a natural disaster, but they are not certain of their coverage and they have not recently reviewed their policies with an agent.

These are among the conclusions resulting from a survey conducted by Allstate Insurance, which encourages people to take proactive steps such as conducting a home inventory, maintaining records somewhere other than their homes, and reviewing their coverage with an agent.

“There are a lot of things that can happen to a home, but there are also a lot of things you can do proactively that would make things easier in the event of damage or loss,” said Ron Stouffer, senior vice president at Allstate Insurance. “Getting through these incidents can be made considerably easier by taking the time to identify what you have and to learn what your policy covers. Allstate offers tools that help inventory homes and assess the worth of homes’ contents, and taking advantage of those tools and reviewing your coverage can leave customers better informed and better prepared.”

Among the details developed in the 2012 survey were the following:

• 43 percent of respondents were concerned about damage from a natural disaster, and 53 percent believed the country has faced more natural disasters than normal over the past several years.
• 22 percent were not certain or didn’t know if they would be covered by their insurance policies in the event of a natural disaster.
• Just 8 percent of respondents, if forced to evacuate their home, said they would take insurance documents or records with them.
• 30 percent of respondents have not read or reviewed their homeowners or renters policies in the last three years.

Allstate Digital Locker available online at DigitialLocker.com and as a mobile app for iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android, guides consumers through creating a detailed home inventory stored securely in a pocket and online. Upload photos, tag items, and organize by room, so all the information you need is right at your fingertips should you ever need to make a claim. Best of all, it provides free and password-protected online storage, keeping your inventory free from the same perils that might have caused a claim.

Allstate also offers What’s Your Stuff Worth to help assess how much your belongings are worth and make real-world comparisons of costs to cover your things. Available in English at allstate.com and in Spanish at miallstate.com, the interactive tool walks consumers through typical rooms in a home and helps count the number of items and their estimated value.

About the Survey
This survey of Americans was conducted by phone May 16, 17 and 19, among a national representative sample of 1,000 American adults with homeowners or renters insurance. The margin of error for the national sample of residents is ±3.1 percent. The survey was conducted by FTI Consulting, Inc. (FTI) for Allstate.

Source: Allstate