You need to take a good look at your CLUE.
But what is a CLUE report?
Most people are clueless about there CLUE report, hehe see what I did there.
CLUE stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange, and this report gives details dating back seven years history of claims with your insurance company. Why does this matter? CLUE reports are used by insurance agents looking to consider new clients. The simplest way of putting it is your CLUE report is basically your credit report for the insurance industry. We often find ourselves wondering what is a good credit score, but what about our comprehensive loss underwriting exchange report?
Your clue report is used during the underwriting process to help in determining the risk of an individual client. This report can affect you if you make too many claims too frequently. A common example of how the information in the CLUE database can come back to affect someone is when a person makes a claim with an insurance company, then proceeds to switch companies without notifying the new company of any of their previous claims. The new company can search the report database and quickly find deception, in turn denying the person insurance on the grounds of false information being provided to them.
How to access your CLUE report?
You actually have two ways that you are entitled to obtain free insurance reports, the first one being an adverse decision scenario in which an insurance provider denies insurance based on information from the consumer report. When a situation like this occurs the insurance company is obligated to inform you on how to obtain a free copy of the specialty report.
The second way is to take advantage of your right to obtain a free CLUE report. LexisNexis is the place to go for this. They are a consumer reporting agency that gathers all of this information and provides it to the insurance providers as well as other paying customers, but you can get a free copy of the report they have on you –
here
Much like like you can go to www.creditkarma.com to get a free credit score, be sure to check out my write-up on Credit Karma for more information on it.
You may be wondering what constitutes an “adverse” decision, so here’s a couple of scenarios:
1) You apply for automobile insurance but are denied because your credit history is not adequate enough for the insurer to assess and rank your level of risk.
2) You apply for homeowners’ insurance but are denied insurance because of claims found in your CLUE report.
Along with these two examples are numerous other situations that would fall under adverse action and enable your right to a free copy of your specialty report.
As far as rights, with the CLUE report you have the same abilities as with your credit report. The one free copy per year that you are entitled to as mentioned earlier is thanks to recent amendments to the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act). You also have the right to dispute grossly inaccurate or incomplete information found in the CLUE report. Many states have passed laws in regards to consumer concerns over CLUE reports and insurance scores. These laws vary by state so if you are interested in getting more information you should contact your state insurance commissioner.
The CLUE database and report is for the most part unknown to the general public. Unless you ask about it, your insurance agent or provider will most likely not volunteer the information. While your insurance provider is not under legal obligation to inform you of the database, it is something that you should be checking out yourself as a consumer. Take the action to know what is out there about you and get a CLUE.
Author: KC Beavers
KC Beavers is a semi-retired entrepreneur. The subject of personal finance has always fascinated him. In an effort to not bore those around him with all his love of personal finance as much he has come here to bore all of you instead.
