Traveler's Insurance....

[HexHead]

My wife is an insurance agent and told me this morning about a conversation she had with an underwriter at Traveler's yesterday. The guy called her with questions about an insured's rider he wanted to add to his homeowner's insurance. The underwriter questioned the stated value of $10,000 worth of firearms and asked why did he need so much, was he a collector? He went down the list and then told her that they wouldn't insure an AR-10. He said they won't insure a home that has an AR-10 or AR-15 "because they are "assault rifles" and they don't insure homes with assault rifles."

My wife got him to agree to an exception, but he insisted on the following provisions. He had to get a safe, ammo had to be stored separately, no guns could be kept loaded and that there were no children living at the house.

 

[Cyclimus]

Insurance companies regularly drive me nuts for just this sort of reason. Really want to play with their head, ask them to statistically justify their policy (most policies have a statistical rationale behind them which determines the "risk" and thus the cost of the policy). Regardless, their commercials are stupid...

 

[Flyboy]

If this can be confirmed, I'm sure the NRA (and other news outlets) would love to spread the word about Traveler's anti-gun bigotry.

 

[JImbothefiveth]

It might have just been a salesperson with an agenda.

 

[Sam1911]

This may happen, occasionally, and it would be worth the effort to go over that person's head and make sure that his company really had such a policy.

And if they do, take your insurance business elsewhere.

My insurance company has no problem with insuring personally owned firearms worth over $10K. They write a rider to your policy to cover them, you pay a small bit more in your premium, and everyone's happy.

-Sam

 

[JohnBT]

I was with Travelers homeowners for 20 or 25 years before getting dumped off on Geico. Yes, oddly enough now I have all of my insurance with Geico after being auto-only since 1967. Or maybe Geico is just handling the customer service stuff for Travelers homeowners. When they made the switch they threatened to cut me off if I didn't put a handrail on the two steps up to the back porch. They dropped it when I pointed out that they'd been taking my premiums for a quarter of a century just the way it was.

Anyway, I called and asked about a firearm rider a year or so ago with the question "How much for a rider because my father is moving to assisted living and is thinking about giving me all of his guns?"

The first words out of her mouth were, "Do you have a safe?" I answered her questions, told her I'd owned guns for 50 years, and went elsewhere.

John

 

[HexHead]

It might have just been a salesperson with an agenda.

No, my wife is an agent. She was speaking with an underwriter. They are the ones that rate the policies and decide whether to accept the application or not. They pretty much are the final word on whether the insurance company issues the policy or not.

 

[jorb]

Change companies.

 

[Animal Mother]

Change companies.

+1


My insurance company had no problem with insuring my guns with an additional rider. I opted for Collectibles Insurance because they were cheaper.

 

[Flyboy]

That's a much stronger case than I first thought. That's what I get for reading quickly.

Did she record the name of the person she spoke to at the underwriting company?

This needs to be publicized if it can be properly substantiated. If nothing else, it'll force Traveler's to make a statement one way or the other.

 

[Animal Mother]

I was listening to NPR the other day, and learned that Traveler's Insurance merged with Citigroup back in 1998, and later split in 2005. Citigroup is fairly well known among gun owners as being an extremely anti-gun company. It should therefore come as no surprise to learn that Traveler's is also anti-gun, as I'm sure they absorbed quite a bit of Citigroup's corporate culture.

The facts being what they are, I hope the current collapse of Citigroup will lead to a rethink of their current anti-gun stance, which does nothing but hurt their bottom line.

In the meantime there are plenty of other insurance companies that won't discriminate against you because you believe in the right to defend yourself.

Shop accordingly.