So it's renewal time, yaye me! Bob emailed me and gave me a quote for Old Republic which was identical to last year's premium. He told me one other came in 2K higher. I spoke with a friend that also has a FX-3 and asked him who he used. I wasn't sure of the etiquette of using a broker, is it okay to get quotes from another broker? So I did that, I went to another broker my friend used and they give you a summary of every quote they receive so you can see. Well, it was interesting as there weren't a lot of quotes for whatever reason. The gist is it seems it's very hard to get 400K hull value coverage from many of the providers as so many are bending metal. It makes sense, many of us in this type of plane are not landing on official airports, we're taking these planes to unknown landing areas and we're paying the premium for that freedom and we're paying the premium for the result of that freedom. I'll keep it at that.
As the premiums were pretty much the same I really didn't want to go through the work of giving a new broker all of the details even though he came in slightly lower than Bob's quote as Bob has all the info and it's just easier for me to stay with the current broker. I did tell Bob that another broker came in lower using USAIG and he apologized that he thought they were not issuing coverage for FX-3's. He did go to them with a hull value 399,998 (not using 400K) for whatever reason and he came in lower so I accepted it. I also got quotes for 350 and 375K. My situation is a little unique as some know and won't get into the details but per chatGPT CubCrafters significant raised prices post 2021 so do you insure for replacement now or base it off of what you paid then? It's a balance as we all know.
Moral is, my renewal is about $400 less this year from last year (around 5500 now vs 5900 a year ago) for 400K hull value which is still painful but nature of this Type. I'm going with USAIG instead of Old Republic. Both are supposedly great but per chatGPT USAIG has advantages and is preferred.
I'll include the chart from the other broker I went to so you can see how few quotes came back. I have no damage or accident history and have ratings from Commercial, Instrument, Multi, etc. and over 3K hours. I did not fly much in the past year so that may play in as I would expect. Who knows. Many of these quotes are from automated systems as I asked Bob, does one's experience ever come into play with insurance companies. I have a military training background, etc. He explained in some cases some training programs help as it seems USAIG does like that but for the most part it's an automated system so it's hard to communicate that.
