Protecting Your Home with Allstate and Bradley Maruyama

Interview Transcription

ATTILIO:
Speaking of people that make you feel like you’re sitting on the bluff, look overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Who’s that? That would

ADRIENNE:
be Bradley Maruyama of Allstate insurance. Hey, Bradley. And I’m just gonna do a quick little intro on Bradley. I mean, I know he calls in and he gives our tips, but I want our guests to really understand who is this. Bradley Maruyama, so he is born and raised in Hawaii, completed his Bachelor of Business at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, reflecting his deep roots and commitment to the islands as as the owner of Maruyama Associates,

ATTILIO:
Allstate Insurance, he brings over 20 years of experience in the industry has built strong relationships with local families, understanding their unique needs and challenges. Please welcome back to our guest, Bradley Maruyama, hello, hello. What you got for us this week? Bradley,

BRADLEY:
Oh, okay. There’s a lot of people that are struggling to find homeowners insurance when they have prior claims. Their roof is bad. We got a market so, you know, I’ve tried to reach out to some of our mutual partners and let them know. But we do have a product now where, if they do have multiple claims and can’t get insurance, we do have a carrier that can fulfill their needs. And this product we have actually has hurricane embedded into it. So initially I was quoting this product, and I was like, oh my goodness, it’s so expensive, but it does include the fire, the wind, the sudden and absent of pipers and hurricanes. So it’s everything all in one,

ADRIENNE:
and we got a problem. And you’re saying that, like, if it’s, you know, a person that’s had the multiple claims and is having a hard time getting insurance, this is kind of, like, maybe, like, the hard money type solution of insurances, like, it’s a little bit more expensive solution, it’s but, you know, like, at least you’ll be covered, right? Because you can’t get a loan without the insurance. Yeah,

BRADLEY:
yeah. And the reason why it’s such a big tip is, I’ve seen three properties fall out of escrow, you know, they reach out to the to the brokers. The brokers can’t find anyone, even through surplus lines. So what a surplus lines company is, is somebody that will take the higher risk properties. But we’ve been coming across where RPS is an example of a surplus lines company, and they’re not even considering insuring these properties. So, you know, there was a, there was a older couple in their 70s. They had Hartford. They had two unfortunate water claims, yeah. Okay, so they got discontinued. I was able to place them with ROI, which is a standard carrier, but due to the roof age, this year, ROI was not exist. Was not wanting to renew the policy, because the roof wasn’t redone since 1985

ATTILIO:
how graduated from high school, you

BRADLEY:
know. But being, being in her mid 70s, they’re on fixed incomes. They don’t have 50,000 to fix the rule and put on a property. And so I was able to give them an option for, let’s see, $4,400 per year, but that included hurricane, so at least they have an option. Yeah. But here’s step two, because she she brought something interesting up to me. She said, Brad, you know my my, in my eyes, my roof is still in good standing. So that’s I had to break it down. There’s two there’s two sides to every story. And in this case, a lot of carriers don’t want to ensure these order roofs because. Is an insurance paying premium, but when there is that roof loss and they decline it due to wear and tear? Yeah, insurers are not they’re not happy because they’re like, Brad, I’m paying premium, and now the carrier is declining my claim due to wear and tear. That’s not fair, and that’s why a lot of these carriers now are saying, instead of getting to that unfortunate issue of going to the Department of Insurance because we’re declining a claim due to wear and tear, they’re not they’re just not accepting it until they have an acceptable roof. So there’s two sides of the story. The carriers are wanting to take roofs that are in good standing because they don’t want the insurance to pay premium and get a decline claim due to wear and tear when there’s a loss. So that’s like, that’s the background story,

ATTILIO:
paying for insurance for your brand new 2000 tree Toyota, Tacoma, the bagays Cherry. But in reality, you go on 1987 Toyota Tercel, they’re not going to replace your 1987 Toyota Tercel with on 2000 chi, Toyota Tacoma, the bug ice cherry. So you got to make sure you’re getting insurance for what you actually have, as far as your roof condition. And I get it. It doesn’t make sense, because everybody is, Oh, get the insurance, then I get new roof. No, it’s get the insurance to preserve your roof. If it’s in good shape, should you need it to be replaced? Right? That sounds fair enough.

BRADLEY:
Yeah. Attilio, that’s a that’s a perfect example, because that 2003 Toyota Tacoma, yeah, could last 2030 years, but in those 2030, years that owner probably had to change a clutch. Yeah, they have to maintain and probably change the brakes, you know? So there’s the insurance policy isn’t made just to go and fix the problems. Someone’s got to actually maintain the house. They got to maintain their cars on their side. It’s not just insurance that’s going to replace and fix, fix everything.

ATTILIO:
Oh yeah, a couple batteries, because the damn teenagers keep leaving the dome light on. Oh,

ADRIENNE:
so, so. Bradley, I know that when we have you on for these, uh, longer segments, yeah, we like to remind our listeners about the moment of truth. Yeah, what is that moment of truth? It’s like about that the moment of truth. What is the moment of truth? We

ATTILIO:
just keep saying it over and over, because it’s important.

BRADLEY:
It’s the most important part of insurance. The moment of truth is, yeah, all you listeners and insurers out there are paying an insurance company and insurance agent premiums every month, every year, the moment of truth is to make sure that your agent and your company is going to come through when you really need it. So that’s something we pride ourselves, ourselves on our office, but especially me. So you know, every once in a while, I get these insurers that say, Oh, I’m getting a call from Brad Maruyama, finally, yeah, but they don’t realize that damn day now I’m I’m dropping people off at a budding fender shop, yeah? Or I’m climbing on a roof to do an inspection, to give a second opinion of why this claim might not be covered. So I take claims to to heart. I want to make sure that if we’re declining it. You know, I want to be able to give the insured a reason why it’s not covered. Yeah, or if there are a little, a little insurer that if they don’t have someone to take them down to the binding vendor, I’m here. I do those kind of things to make sure that they feel special when they’re filing a claim that we’re going to go over and be on at our at our office. Awesome. Well, I

ADRIENNE:
want to give a quick example that just happened. Adrienne, could you give a quick example that just I will so, I mean, we’re in this very long escrow with all these extensions. Oh yeah, I remember, it’s very just complicated. And anyways, this other insurance person was given instructions to provide the insurance binder, I believe was like last week. It was like five or six days ago, yeah, and no one had heard from him. He went to Thailand. Who knows where he went? But there was no communication in Thailand, probably. So. Anyways, there was, you know, like, the conditions, right? The conditions. One of them was a transfer of a solar lease. The other condition was homeowner inspect, the homeowner insurance, yeah. And so we’re doing everything on our part with this whole Solar stuff. Well, Jerry, I’m like, Hey, like, why don’t we have docs? Why don’t we have docs? Why aren’t we have we the final approval? What’s going on?

ATTILIO:
Oh, what happened? We’re

ADRIENNE:
still waiting on the insurance. And I’m like, give me this insurance guy’s information, and I’m like, calling and texting and emailing nothing. Yeah. I was like, You know what? We need to just call Bradley. He’s our guy. He will respond right away. He’s super responsive. So, boom, I. Text. We got Bradley on the phone. It was like, Monday night at night, 830 at night, there is an insurance emergency,

ATTILIO:
insurance emergency. We get a hold of Bradley. Bradley. Bradley gives you an answer, like, my cousin from Waianae, oh, horas, I can fix that. And

ADRIENNE:
he did, yeah right away. And then, like, finally, the other guy respond. He’s like, Oh, I was on vacation, yeah? Like, at least have a Vacation Responder on, like, inform the wait office. So anyways, um, yeah, like, had we just been using Bradley to begin with? And again, like, we’re on the list side. So you know, this was another agent. So hopefully this other agent will use Bradley in the future.

ATTILIO:
I just want to point out that, yes, we’re not saying Bradley don’t go on vacation. But here’s what I do. Know you, Bradley has a Cali though, you, you correct me if I’m wrong, like, what? Like a

ADRIENNE:
whole team. He’s got a team of eight people, but

ATTILIO:
you’re saying, like, Cali, like, how gangbangers say California? It’s a person, yes,

ADRIENNE:
yeah, that’s his person. Like, you just, you can’t get ahold of Bradley. Boom. You call Cali.

ATTILIO:
He has a team. That’s the point. Same thing with Adrienne and myself, when we’re on vacation, your with Bradley and his team, your insurance binder needs do not go on vacation with Bradley, exactly,

ADRIENNE:
yeah, and it doesn’t delay your loan because your insurance agents on vacation and not communicating,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, in Thailand, wherever.

ADRIENNE: 
So I just want to compliment you, Bradley, I you know, I wasn’t expecting you to just jump on it at 830 at nine pop call, but you did, and we thank you and appreciate you for you know how responsive you are. And

ATTILIO: 
because would you say that that was a moment of truth? Yes, I think so.

ADRIENNE: 
And you should never wait to the last minute for these insurance binders, by the way.

ATTILIO: 
And there you have it. My honor. You are your honor. We rest our case, but he’s dismissed

BRADLEY: 
you guys so short, you know, I think we all through the 12 years, we’ve built a really good team and a lot of trust. So if I do see you calling me at 830 at night. I know it’s an emergency. I want to make sure, yeah, I help you guys out, because it does go both ways. And I, I really, truly appreciate uh, Adrienne partnerships. Yeah, so the listeners out

ATTILIO: 
there, except that one time on a call late at night, I was like, you know, taking my 16 year old to go see that the new Deadpool movie. Do you think it’s appropriate? Patty was right on. It’s like, No, it’s not appropriate.

ADRIENNE: 
No, he did say it was appropriate.

ATTILIO: 
No, it wasn’t.

ADRIENNE: 
That’s a bad

ATTILIO: 
that was a Disney movie. Yeah, it has the most F bombs in it. That’s true. Look it up.

ADRIENNE: 
Well, it’s just F bombs. Yeah, anyway, it’s okay. First

ATTILIO: 
F bombs is what you say when you don’t get yourself insured with Bradley. That’s right, that’s it. All right, in the moment of the F bomb. No, no, we’re gonna still go with the truth in the moment

ADRIENNE: 
of truth, moment of truth. And just for the record, we do not abuse that relationship, but only, we only reach out to Bradley when it is,

ATTILIO: 
when it is an emergency necessary. All right, thank you. Well, do you have anything else from Bradley?

ADRIENNE: 
Um, you know what? Bradley, I want to talk more about, like, because this is kind of a hot topic that we’re seeing. Yeah, the association insurance and all these getting crazy, super big increases that we keep seeing. Like, talk to us about that. What’s

ATTILIO: 
going on? She lives in one complex. She said her maintenance fees went up, like, double double because of insurance. What the heck is going on out there?

BRADLEY: 
Yeah, I know that it’s a really hot topic. And what I do want to share with you, there was a talk I’m gonna send Adrienne lallyo YouTube link of the town hall that has insurance commissioner. It had a couple four politicians that formed a committee for Hawaii, as well as yes and some association experts that kind of break it down, but here, this is what’s going on in a nutshell. Yeah, across the country, we’ve experienced a lot of catastrophic losses from hurricanes in Florida to tornadoes in Kansas, wildfires in California and Maui Lahaina fire, yeah, last year was, I think they specified 24 catastrophic losses. So what that means to us is that with all these losses, insurance companies have an insurance company, okay? That is so Allstate has what’s called a reinsurance company that ensures that if there was mass losses, that there’s going to be insurance over and above what Allstate can cover. That reinsurance company, because of all these catastrophic losses, their pool of money has tried has dwindled, yeah, so they increase their rates to these hurricane carriers and homeowners carriers, when they increase their rates to London or to an old. Aid or to a first insurance those rates were passed on, were trickled down, yeah, trickle down to the AOAO insurance carriers. Okay, so what? What that? What that did was some, some AOAO insurance fares have increased their rates 600% Oh, okay, so what does that mean? Now the maintenance fees have gone up. Okay. Now to keep these costs down, some of these insurance carriers gave the associations an option number one, increase their deductibles. Yep, or number two, cut the replacement cost and hurricane coverage, reduce

ATTILIO: 
coverage, increase deductibles, Yep,

BRADLEY: 
yeah. So there’s now, there’s two issues that come along with that. If the deductible and an association goes up to 5070, 500,000 what is that? Do to the HL six or to the unit holders? Condo policy, given gap, it puts up exposure to the HL six or the condo owners policy. There’s a lot, a lot bigger exposure. Now, if there’s a loss that HL six policy now could be subject to $100,000 loss. Now a $200 condo policy that’s exposed to $100,000 in losses. Now it’s becoming lopsided so the severity and frequency to this individual HL six policy that you’re only paying 200 a year for. It’s not profitable to an all state, a state farm, yeah, a first insurance. So what happens? The rates go up. So now you’re seeing HL six policies that once, once upon a time, was 200 a year. There are five, six, up to $1,000 a year for these individual policies. So that’s one problem. It’s the trickle down. Yeah, but let’s go back to the issue of the association’s cutting replacement costs in hurricane when they do that, tiny man, Freddie Mac will not lend on these properties because

ADRIENNE: 
there’s not enough insurance, so you’re like eliminating insurance, Yep,

ATTILIO: 
yeah, because they have conforming they have conforming guidelines, and these would not be within that conforming guidelines for their insurance requirements, yes, yeah.

BRADLEY: 
So increasing AOAO, the increasing premiums have caused this trickle down effect for the age of six individual policies and for the cutting the replacement costs and hurricane because they have to lower that 600% premium increase. What do we do? They panic, right? What are we going to do? How would we keep the cost also union holders, and so this has now been a trickle down effect of what’s going on in the industry. Yeah,

ATTILIO:
so it’s not, you know, I think people feel out like, Oh, I’ll come it’s me. No, it’s everybody.

ADRIENNE: 
I thought I saw. I thought I saw, like one of our team members sent us something about, like the governor was now getting involved with some of these insurance issues. I didn’t really read through it, but I did see that there’s, you know, definitely political involvement now trying to solve this, this big challenge. So no

ATTILIO: 
matter what the how they want to legislate this or that, carriers then will have a choice to get out of the market. And it’ll make it worse, Governor, if you’re listening, so make sure that it’s a combination of economic sense as well as legislative constituent sense.

BRADLEY: 
Is the point, I think. In a nutshell, what they’re trying to do is to make sure that they can fill the gap of these properties that are underinsured. Yeah. And I also believe don’t quote me on this one. I hope I’m not talking it’s just

ATTILIO: 
your opinion. It’s just your opinion. I

BRADLEY: 
think they’re trying to come up with some solutions for associations to get loans, yeah, to be able to fix their pipes, fix their roofing, yeah, update their electrical, get sprinkler system so a carrier will reduce these premiums. So I think that proclamation is mainly to give options for associations to get a better premium under Association insurance policy,

ATTILIO: 
Bradley always remember you can always start everything with if you want to cover your assets, in my opinion, and then go, go, go, go, go. Now, the one thing that you say, in my opinion, like, Oh, your baby. Real ugly. That’s not going to take you’re not covered in that one.

ADRIENNE: 
Bradley would never say that. Such a nice guy, but I’m

BRADLEY: 
going to share that link with Adrienne Lally on our website. Go to their site. It’s just for YouTube, and it kind of talks about the programs are coming out with. It’ll give you, in layman’s terms, what’s going on with associate basically what I talked about, but they have some specific facts that they’re gonna Yeah, throw at you of what’s what’s causing all this ruckus, yeah.

ATTILIO: 
And it’s just something to keep in mind, making sure that as you’re out there looking to buy real estate, that you’re being aware and being it’s being brought to your attention by your agent. That’s what we do. And if you’re going to sell, just be aware that those also increases will affect the sales side, again, supply, demand, price, they’re all interconnected, and we’re seeing the trickle down in all those economic factors with the increase in insurance.

ADRIENNE: 
Now, Bradley, we are reaching the end of our show. Is there any, is there any final words of wisdom you have for our listeners before we let you go?

ATTILIO: 
Besides, don’t call your friends baby ugly. What else you got? What other words of wisdom

BRADLEY: 
you got? So, you know, I talked to some of our partners, and what I would always go back to, you know, is that, whether it’s me or your insurance agent, review your policies, because that’s when we talk about the moment of truth, right? It’s always, I wish I had jewelry coverage. I wish I understood what my hurricane deductible was, yeah, review with your agent. So you’re you’re clear. The clear understanding is there when you have to file a claim. So review your policy with your agents.

ATTILIO: 
Work with a local agent that understands the differences. You know, in the mainland, it’s jewelry. In Hawaii, it’s jewelry. And

ADRIENNE: 
I would also say, if you can’t get a hold of your local agent, give Bradley a call, and it’s like no obligation, high response rate. He is very responsive. He’s friendly and very patient. And you know, if he can offer you something that is better, or, you know, just as good, then, you know, make the switch. Yeah,

ATTILIO: 
it could be more better if you call Bradley. Bradley, local boy, born and raised, all right. Thank you, Bradley.

ADRIENNE: 
Thank you, Bradley. We appreciate you. Thank you.

ATTILIO: 
Thank you.

Follow Us On Social Media