What happens to your record when you file a claim?
There are impacts on your insurance history the moment you file a claim with your carrier. In fact, any contact with the company may be recorded on your history, even if a claim is not formally filed. Activity remains visible on your CLUE report for 7 years from the date of contact, but some insurance companies base pricing and renewals decisions on the last 3-5 years of claims activity. Others consider the entire 7-year history.
What is a CLUE Report?
Your CLUE report is not hidden. Similar to a credit report, you are able to view your CLUE insurance risk and insurance activity once a year without cost through LexisNexis. CLUE reports can also be pulled as reference by real estate agents and insurance agents in the course of making sales or inquiries for their clients.
The immediate cost of a claim: Your deductible
The first cost to you after you file a claim is the deductible you owe as the ‘first dollar’ expense that goes toward your repair or replacement costs. The deductible is the amount that is subtracted or ‘deducted’ from your payout and left as your responsibility to pay before your insurer provides the remainder of the money needed to cover your damages.
What's an Insurance Deductible?
Deductibles have been defined as a flat price for years, and some still are. Changing weather conditions and increases in labor and material costs have resulted in a shift to more frequent use of ‘percentage deductibles,’ meaning that the deductible owed is calculated as a percentage of the value of the insured asset.
For example, if your home was valued at $350,000 and your homeowners policy included a 3% wind and hail deductible, filing a claim for hail damage would mean you owed $10,500 towards the work needed to repair your home before the insurance company paid anything out.
The ongoing costs of filing a claim
Further costs will only be clear later on, including higher prices for insurance due to raised rates that tend to follow a claim. Policyholders also stand a chance of losing any discounts (often between 5-20% for claim-free accounts) they may have been offered by their insurance agent with a clean risk history.
Your policy may exclude certain elements or types of coverage–floods, for instance. In cases where the excluded peril is the cause of damage to your property, you may find yourself faced with an out-of-pocket expense that you hadn’t planned for. These costs are generally rare occurrences that can be prepared for with the purchase of a supplemental insurance policy to cover the peril in question.
Lesser-known coverage gaps (ACV)
Another shift in residential roof coverage that has accelerated in the last two years is the practice of moving older roofs from Replacement Cost Value coverage (RCV) to Actual Cash Value coverage (ACV) where the payout only covers the depreciated value of the asset including wear and tear and age factors.
How to Get Replacement Cost Coverage (RCV) for Your Roof
Before making a claim for damage to your home, take some time to weigh the financial costs associated with each option. There’s a popular rule of thumb that can guide you in the right direction: If the cost to repair is equal to 2-3x your deductible, filing the claim is a smart move. If the repair cost is equal to, or only slightly greater than the deductible, a claim is unlikely to be worth your time and the eventual added costs that would follow.
An example illustrates those added costs:
If you experienced $1,800 worth of damage to an asset with a $1,000 policy deductible, the additional $800 you’d pay for immediate repairs is a deal compared to the estimated $1,600-$2,700 in increased premiums that you would pay over the next 3-5 years.
Property damage claims averaged $15,747 over the years of 2018-2022. Compare this average with the wind and hail damage deductible included with your home insurance policy to get an idea of the cost difference you might see between these options.
The risk of non-renewal
Aside from estimating cost, considering the possibility of non-renewal is another part of the calculation you can do before you make a claim.
As established, your insurance claims history follows you similar to how your credit history does–events that appear on these records remain visible to creditors, lenders, insurers, and other parties for a set period of time–usually seven years.
A heavily noted risk history may be less attractive to an insurance provider in your future. This means that they could be unwilling to extend coverage to you or your home based on previous claims activity. If your record shows more than one claim per year, you’re likely to see an increase in premium costs on related coverage, and possibly all coverage, in the years to come.
If you decide to shop for insurance in the future, you may also find it more difficult to buy coverage from a different carrier, as providers may see you as a significant insurance risk that is beyond their established levels.
In a worst-case insurance scenario, your carrier may opt to ‘non-renew’ you, or to decline to offer you a renewal option, leaving you without coverage. Non-renewals have approximately doubled since 2020, with increased repair costs and significantly higher numbers of claims across the country. Residents in the highest climate risk states have experienced non-renewals up to 80% more frequently.
Homeowners in Texas are protected by an additional rule within the Texas Consumer Bill of Rights around how insurance coverage is offered and renewed. Carriers are required to provide written warning after a second claim is filed within a three-year period when there is a chance of non-renewal that would be triggered by a third claim.
California has its own protection in place defining that rate increases must be justified and approved by the California Department of Insurance, preventing the penalization of an individual claim case through price increases.
It’s also noteworthy that the CLUE report database is a nationwide collection and because of that, changing insurance carriers across state lines would never wipe your history clean–the ‘marks’ on your record would be visible to any interested party that made an inquiry, regardless of location. This also means that homeowners are free to shop around for better prices, though they may not always see significant differences if multiple claims are visible in their recent history.
What are my options?
Making a claim on traditional insurance policies will always have some impact on your insurance record and future insurance costs, but some standalone policies can offer a payout with no deductible or loss-recording impacts attached.
Learn more about how Sola’s Wind and Hail coverage can help you pay down expensive percentage deductibles and other costs that your homeowners policy leaves in your hands. Independent agents can visit our Partners page to learn more about Sola products and how they’re sold.
Sources:
Iacurci, Greg. “42% of homeowners say insurance costs have gone up ‘a lot,’” CNBC, May 27, 2026, https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/27/homeowners-insurance-premiums.html
Masterson, Les. “How much do claims increase home insurance premiums?” Insure.com, Apr. 16, 2026, https://www.insure.com/home-insurance/one-claim.html
Gray is the Senior Content Specialist at Sola Insurance, working with the Sales and Marketing teams to provide helpful, valuable content for homeowners and agents. Gray has worked previously in finance, logistics, and advertising.
