Non-Standard Homeowners Insurance in the USA: Market Dynamics, Affinities and Partnerships is a report investigating the market for property insurance for two non-standard segments: homes built before 1945; and manufactured (mobile) homes. Key features include: an outline of market drivers and the value, growth and segmentation of the market from 2014 to 2018; quantification and commentary concerning the segmentation of policies in force by distribution channels used to buy them in 2018; estimates for underwriter market shares in 2018; a comprehensive listing of major affinity and partnership marketing relationships visible at the time of the research in 2018 for this type of policy, including ones employing 'insurtech' with the aim of disrupting incumbent competitors; and forecasts for the value of the market up to 2022.
Moreover, all market value data, including the forecast, is segmented between the Midwest, Northeast, South and West so that the current magnitude and likely future direction of the opportunity is apparent for each region, and is provided in addition to the report, along with other supporting data, in an associated market data file.
In this report, non-standard homeowners insurance is defined as two mutually exclusive segments. First, it comprises dwellings built prior to 1945: these are often considered to be non-standard because they may be constructed of materials that are more expensive to replace and / or contain historical / period design elements. Secondly, it comprises manufactured homes (also known as mobile homes), defined as prefabricated dwelling structures, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site. As such, the definition used here by Finaccord for a ‘non-standard’ property is determined by the age or type of construction of the dwelling.
The terms ‘manufactured home’ and ‘mobile home’ are typically used interchangeably although true mobile homes are sometimes thought of as those constructed prior to June 1976 while those built after that date are almost always categorized as manufactured homes, meeting US Federal Housing Administration certification requirements, and being delivered with attached metal certification tags.
Note that other property risks that are sometimes considered by insurance providers to be ‘non-standard’ include those owned by individuals with bad credit or a history of making insurance claims, properties that are of very low replacement value, and properties that are either unoccupied or occupied on an irregular basis, such as vacation homes. However, these are not in scope for this study.
Insurance for non-standard properties is generally composed of buildings and contents cover with the potential for it to also include other types of cover such as home emergency and legal protection. Moreover, for the purposes of this report, note that non-standard homeowners insurance includes insurance both for homes occupied by property owners and by renters (thereby taking the form of landlord property insurance for a non-standard home).
In keeping with 11 other studies in this series, research processes and sources used to create it include the following: primary interviews with leading brokers, underwriters and affinity / corporate partners active in this field; in-house data drawn from other Finaccord reports; and comprehensive analysis of secondary information from a diverse range of data sources including US government departments and financial regulators, relevant trade and other associations, specialist publications and published disclosures by competitors active in the market. All relevant workings, such as estimates for attachment rates within the target audience, are presented in a transparent manner.
For further information about this research, please access the table of contents and series prospectus by clicking on the corresponding links to the left-hand side of this page, or e-mail
[email protected].