What changed: from your claims to a predicted score
Underwriting used to lean mostly on what had already happened: your own claims, the home's age, the construction type. Insurers now lean harder on what their models predict will happen. They buy property-level data, run catastrophe models for wildfire, wind, hail, and flood, and increasingly pull aerial and drone imagery to read a roof's condition or the brush around a house. The output is a risk score that helps set your premium and decide whether to write or renew at all. A Wall Street Journal review of the market in May 2026 noted carriers using drone footage to calculate a home's risk score, a practice that is driving up costs for some owners.
What feeds the score
- Your loss history and the property's. Prior claims on you and on the address, drawn from the C.L.U.E. database (below). Even inquiries and small claims can register.
- Aerial and drone imagery. High-resolution photos read for roof wear, missing shingles, tarps, tree overhang, pools, and trampolines. Some carriers re-image properties between renewals.
- Catastrophe models. Wildfire, flood, wind, and hail scores for your exact location, often from third-party model vendors, increasingly granular down to the parcel.
- The home itself. Roof age and material, year built, square footage, systems, distance to a fire station and hydrant, and the rebuild-cost estimate.
- Neighborhood and regional loss trends. How the wider risk pool around you has performed; a bad local run of losses repriced your slice even if your home is fine.
Why your premium can rise with no claim
Because the score is forward-looking, none of it requires you to have filed anything. A model can decide your roof is near end of life from a photo, or that your parcel's wildfire score climbed after a nearby fire season, and your premium follows. That is also why two near-identical homes on the same street can be priced differently: the inputs, not just the address, drive the number.
How to see and dispute the inputs
You cannot argue a model down, but you can fix what it is reading. The inputs are the lever:
- Pull your C.L.U.E. report. The Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, run by LexisNexis Risk Solutions, is the claims-history database carriers query. Under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act you can request it free once every 12 months. Read it for claims that are not yours, duplicates, or a minor inquiry logged as a paid loss.
- Correct errors in writing. Dispute mistakes with LexisNexis (the FCRA requires they investigate) and ask your insurer to re-rate once the record is fixed.
- Send evidence of work the model has not seen. A new roof, cleared defensible space, a replaced electrical panel, or a water shut-off device can all move the score. Photos and dated receipts give the underwriter something to override stale imagery with.
- Ask what imagery was used. If a non-renewal cites roof condition from an aerial photo, ask to see it and supply a current roof certification if the photo is wrong or out of date.
If the score prices you out
A high enough model score can lead a carrier to non-renew or decline outright. If the standard market keeps saying no, your state's FAIR Plan is the insurer of last resort; the state directory shows what each plan covers, its dwelling cap, and how to apply. And if your renewal simply jumped rather than disappeared, the premium-jump walkthrough covers what to check and how to shop without setting off a wave of sales calls.