Credit Profiling and Tiering in your state?

[darnovak]

In many states, carriers now possess the 'magic bullet' for personal lines rating and underwriting. This is composed of two elements - credit profiling and tiering. A carrier can have between 30 and 200 tiers and using credit profiling along with 30 or 40 other items of data about the prospect, place that prospect anywhere within those tiers the carrier chooses. Does your state allow carriers to credit profile for home and auto? If yes, can it be used at renewal to move up or down in tiering? NY only allows credit profiling to be used for decreasing PAP rates (uptiering) on renewal. The carrier will also downtier and/or surcharge for things like at fault accidents, convictions, claims, etc. Now we add items like 'level of education', 'own or rent your home', 'prior carrier', and on and on. I predict that soon we will hear about property claims being used to tier personal auto quotes and auto claims being used to tier homeowners quotes and that items such as 'the lender for your auto loan is on a financial watch list', 'your employer is on a financial watch list', 'your business insurance claims (workers comp, liability, property, business auto etc. will be used to tier your personal quotes and policies)'', 'your mortgage company is on a financial watch list', etc. will be used to tier your personal lines quotes. All of this data is available and I predict it will soon be used (and no doubt it probably is being used - we just don't know about it yet.) Any comments? Ideas? Denials? I am interested in your opinions and experiences. regards,