CLAIMS REVIEW | NEWS & TRENDS
Homeowners’ Claim Costs Fueled by Rise in Severity, Frequency
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he cost of homeowners insurance claims has been rising rapidly because of the combined effects of rising claim severity and increases in claim frequency, an Insurance Research Council (IRC) study of homeowners insurance claim trends found.
From 1997 to 2011, the average claim payment per insured home (houses, apartments and condos) countrywide rose 173 percent, from $229 to $626. In 2011, homeowners insurance claim costs per insured home increased 27 percent. Over the entire study period, the annualized rate of increase was 7.4 percent. In the study, “Trends in Homeowners Insurance Claims,” the IRC examined trends for claims that were not related to catastrophic events and those that were related to catastrophic events.
Trends in average claim severity (the average claim payment per paid claim) for both groups were similar in some respects. For both groups, countrywide claim severity increased almost 200 percent and ended the 15-year period in 2011 with similar values — $8,077 for non-cat-related claims and $7,553 for catrelated claims. Significantly, however, the trend in catastrophe-related claim severity was much more volatile from year-to-year, with dramatic increases and decreases during the study period. Trends in homeowners insurance claim frequency (the number of paid claims per 100 insured homes) were very different for the two groups of claims in the 15-year study period. Claims frequency unrelated to cat events fell substantially from 1997 to
2005 for a variety of factors. Since 2005, however, non-cat-related claim frequency has increased at an annualized rate of 2.9 percent. Cat-related claim frequency, while much more volatile, remained fairly flat through much of the period. CJ
2011 Fatal Work Injury Statistics Down: Report
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n estimated 4,609 fatal work injuries were recorded in the United States in 2011, down from the 4,690 fatal work injuries in 2010, according to results from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI) program conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The rate of fatal work injury for U.S. workers in 2011 was 3.5 per 100,000 full-
time equivalent workers, compared to a final rate of 3.6 per 100,000 for 2010. In the past three years, increases in the counts based on additional information have averaged 166 fatalities per year, or about 3 percent of the revised total. Final 2011 data from the CFOI program will be released in Spring 2013. Fatal work injuries in the private
construction sector declined to 721 in 2011 from 774 in 2010, the fifth consecutive year of lower fatality counts. Fatal construction injuries are down nearly 42 percent since 2006. Fatal work injuries in private truck transportation rose 14 percent in 2011 — the second consecutive year that counts have risen after a series low in 2009. CJ
Study Finds Drivers Unaware of Their Texting Habits
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exting while driving is considered a serious public safety concern, but a new University of Michigan study suggests that drivers might not be aware of their actions. 8 Claims Journal | Fall 2012
U-M researchers found that texting while driving is predicted by a person’s level of “habit” — more so than how much someone texts. When people check their cell phones without thinking about it, the habit represents a type of automatic behavior, or automaticity, the researchers said. Automaticity, which was the key variable in the study, is triggered by situational cues and lacks control, awareness, intention and attention. “In other words, some individuals automatically feel compelled to check for,
read and respond to new messages, and may not even realize they have done so while driving until after the fact,” says Joseph Bayer, a doctoral student in the Department of Communication Studies and the study’s lead author. This first-of-its-kind study, which identifies the role of unconscious thought processes in texting and driving, is different from other research that has focused on the effects of this behavior. Thus, the current study investigates the role of habit in texting while driving, with a focus on how (rather than how much) the behavior is carried out. The findings appear in the Journal Computers in Human Behavior. CJ