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What metrics do you use for picking an insurer for the farm?

We pay off our mortgage in August :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face: :partying_face:
Which means re-arranging our insurance to bill direct rather than pay through escrow. I am thinking about using this as an excuse to shop around for a new insurance provider. Our homeowners and auto policies are all with State Farm. For awhile now I’ve been thinking that our agent really has been just ‘mailing it in’ . No personal service, doesn’t know our policy despite decades of being with the same office. They’ve made a couple mistakes that I consider significant. And I feel like our outbuildings and their contents are not sufficiently covered. This office I think is more comfortable with in-town residences.
So, now I need to develop a strategy to know whether a prospective new insurer is any better. Obviously I can compare cost for same coverage levels, but beyond that?
It seems like any agent you talk to is going to tell you how responsive they are and how much they CARE. You’d think you could rely on word of mouth to see if that’s true, but my area had a massive storm last year with widespread damage to whole neighborhoods. Not many insurers would pass the word-of-mouth test, because almost all of them had lots of complaints about crappy, disinterested adjusters, slow process, lowball settlement offers, etc. So when push came to shove, turns out the local agents were essentially meaningless-- everything was handled by out-of-town adjusters who swarmed the area since there were so many claims. While it may not seem fair to judge insurance agents in a disaster, isn’t that when we most need competent insurance companies and an agent who advocates for us?

I’m also considering trying a broker – I’m thinking they’d be more creative in getting us the right policies, vs State Farm.

So for anyone who has shopped for home/farm insurance in recent years: how did you pick your insurer? What data did you use, other than cost, to differentiate among them?

I understand the difference betw agent, independent agent, and broker – any strong opinions on the merits of these representation types?

former military here, my choice is USAA… we switched to USAA after our former carrier gave notice of 15% increase… contacted USAA, Got Three Times the coverage at 45% the cost of the old policy (well they did send a calendar which apparently was costing me nearly $2,000.

Moved auto/trucks to USAA…again greater level of coverage.

Easy to work with, their web site is wonderful… I can at Any time alter the coverage…at Anytime …

Not military here – closest relatives who served were Mr EF’s grandparents.

Bet that calendar was nice. I think we have a few pens.

I used a broker, State Farm could not provide the kind of coverage I needed and I had used them for years.

That said, I am pretty unhappy with the current situation, but I’ll start a new thread to not derail this one