The Moment of Truth in Navigating Insurance with Bradley Maruyama

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE:
Welcome back. And thanks for listening to the Team Lally real estate show home of the guaranteed sold program or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio and if you have any questions, you can give us a call at 7999596 or check us out online at Teamlally.com.

ATTILIO:
We just took a call from Lisa from Waianae she’s got to use the love seat that she has for snob just kidding that I was hearing this podcast where it was like a radio swap meet. That was real popular. Maybe we’ll do that. No, we’re not gonna do that. No, no, we’re not gonna do that. So I’ll just joking with you guys. But speaking of the radio swap meet, share with them what you’re going to share with them. Yes, so we’re gonna bring you on. That was cold for like I forgot what I was gonna talk about.

ADRIENNE:
Today it was born and raised right here in Hawaii. He obtained his Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. With over two decades of Allstate Insurance, he’s established strong ties with local families gaining valuable insights into their needs, proudly owning Maruyama and Associates Allstate Insurance in Hawaii he continues to serve his community. Please welcome our guest Bradley Maruyama.

ATTILIO:
Hey, Bradley.

BRADLEY:
Hey, how’s it going?

ATTILIO:
Good, good, good. Oh, real quick for our listeners that I remember if you have any questions you got is wanting to talk about on the radio, just send us an email info@Teamlally.com. Org, give us a call

ADRIENNE:
7999596. And you know, so for Bradley this week, he’s our featured guest. And he does call in, you know, pretty frequently with his tips of the week. So we just wanted to get on question for Bradley. Yeah. So if you have a question for Bradley, we’ll make sure to get it to him. And he can answer it on, you know, a subsequent week on during his tip of the week.

ATTILIO:
Yeah. All right, Bradley, what do you got for us this week?

BRADLEY:
All right. So, you know, we went over the hurricane

increase with deferred insurance over the last couple of weeks. And, you know, I, I was kind of torn. You know, I’ve been talking to a lot of brokers, I’ve been talking to other agents, and

no one’s really being proactive about it. So if you’re listening, and you do have to defer insurance, it’s very important to number one, take a look at what you got. And number two, if you’re, if the agency or with isn’t being proactive and reaching out to you, maybe you should reach out back to the your agent. There’s other options, because if not, once, once you pay that premium, and it goes over the renewal date, there’s no way to cancel that Zephyr policy, you’re gonna be stuck with it for a year.

ATTILIO:
Yeah. Well,

ADRIENNE:
I want to I want to say is one of Bradley’s customers, we’ve talked about this. Yeah. And I think what you said it was like, April, or May, we’ve got to make some adjustments in order to avoid this whole situation. So

ATTILIO:
start in February for you procrastinators.

BRADLEY: 
Yeah, yeah, your Adrienne’s when it’s coming up in May, but we’re already looking at it and making sure that it doesn’t get paid by her escrow account and get stuck with that $2,000 increase. It’s very significant. We have correspondents that it was going to be an average of 60. But what we seen for the February and March renewals, it’s 100% rate increase. So whether you hear a frame, a single wall frame, or double wall frame, it’s about 100% rate increase. So you know, we rather we rather, again, you know, be proactive and build that relationship with the, with the client, knowing that we as an agency is being proactive, and so they don’t say, you know, in seven months, why did my escrow account go up? 200? Why didn’t you give me another option? So we’re taking a little different approach on on this situation? What I, what I also wanted to let people know, because some people will shop Okay, during this time, yeah, and it’s not just shopping with, with from leaving all state, but even maybe leaving another carrier. But I want people to be aware that when you are quoting with another carrier, to get some recommendations, but also look what apples to apples would be because there are carriers out there in the hurricane business, that don’t do less than a 5% hurricane deductible. So what that means is if you have a half a million dollar structure, and you have a 5% deductible, you’re carrying a $25,000 deductible, and I even have some loan officers and some lenders that do this every day, and they’re like, Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I do. Look at my policy. I didn’t realize that a $32,000 deductible. That’s crazy. Yeah. And the reason why the carrier’s doing it, it takes off a lot of liability off off their shoulders. If there’s a category one hurricane that comes through and the roof blows off. Technically, the insured is self insuring their roof. Yes, a roof will cost about 25 to 35,000. So it does alleviate a lot of exposure for the carriers. So keep in mind that when you are shopping, that you look at that hurricane deductible because there is a carrier that does no lower than 5%. Yeah. So

ADRIENNE: 
you may not even realize that that’s what’s happening until you do this review, or your

ATTILIO:
roof of your house gets blown off. Yes. So

ADRIENNE: 
let’s do the review. Now Bradley if any of our listeners just want to call you and maybe they’re not with all statements or with another brand, yeah. But you know, how do you handle that? How do you help them with their reviews? Yeah,

BRADLEY: 
so some people don’t like to give us declaration pages. So a declaration page would be something that has your VIN numbers, your your coverages. They don’t want us to see it because they think that we’re going to make it cheaper than what they currently have. But all these rates are set. The way to do it is you know, scan and email me or meet me in person and do an apples to apples comparison because I can’t do any better. I I can at least give you some advice. Yes, now, I can do a quote based off an address, but I will be pulling whatever I can see in the county records. And it’s not always accurate, but I can at least give you a comparison. Pretty close to what I can see. Here’s something that’s important, when we do these reviews, a lot of people still have building replacement cost per square foot to be around to 25 to 50. That’s very low. In today’s environment, we’ve been quoting people 325 to 350 a foot, you know, depending on the on the makeup, but to 25 to 250, a square foot is a little low. So to give you an idea of if you have 1000 square foot living area home. Right now we had almost they would probably advise you getting through under 50,000 to replace that structure if it burned down to the ground. But it’s very, very common, you know, four out of every five declaration pages I’m looking at is still at about two to 250 a foot so

ADRIENNE: 
it hasn’t been updated. So they’ve not been updated, been updated? Yes. Well, I want to say to for, you know, people that are not with Bradley, you also have this other thing that we like to call the moment of truth, the

ATTILIO: 
moment of truth.

ADRIENNE: 
So let’s talk a little bit about that. Because I feel like, you know, the experience that we have, you know, with Bradley and his team versus I mean, I don’t know, I’ve always been with Bradley and his team. But I hear nightmares about other people that are do not work with Bradley and his team. And let’s just talk about this moment of truth. And what happens? Yeah,

BRADLEY: 
so, so moment of truth. We you know, we’ve we’ve talked about it for 15 years now. And basically, you know, a lot of people are paying premiums for 1015 20. Some people 30 years, right, they never use their policy. And it shouldn’t be a given but the age, this is when the agent has to do his his work, right? He’s been getting paid premium. But this is a time when an agent or agency should help handhold an insured and walks into that claims process. So when they’re uncomfortable or don’t understand something, that’s when a moment of truth kicks in, what is my agent going to do for me? Is he going to help me set up my rental car? Is he going to help me get my appraisal done on my banged up car? When I’m in a pickle and the property manager and insurance agency and association claims adjusters are all fighting is my agent gonna step up and assist me? So that’s, that’s the moment of truth of our offense. Is that when you feel like you’re stuck, or we’re going to help you? Absolutely,

ATTILIO:
by the way, I just want to provide some clarification. In the mainland, we get into a pickle but in Hawaii, we get into deep Kimchi.

ADRIENNE: 
Kimchi. No, no, Bradley, I know that you have shared. You know, you’ve been on on our show on and off many, many times over the last 10 plus years. Yeah. And one moment of truth that really just stands out to me, is I think this happened like it was like on Christmas Day. You’re out there helping your customer with some major issues. I remember that one that really like that stood out. Yeah,

BRADLEY:
it was a killer. Like I still remember it. And it was Christmas day and she was stuck and all her flooring was up in the education company last. That’s I remember that when I was on Christmas day.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, Bradley arrived in a flying sleigh being led by reindeer. And he came in through the chimney. Oh, no, no, no, that was Santa Claus. Nevermind.

BRADLEY: 
Yeah. And the floor was in shambles. And she was crying and she goes, What do I do? I need help. Yeah. And somebody at the turn off the fence or give me a temporary place to stay? Yeah, but I do remember that nuisance? Yes. Christmas day. Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
And that’s the key because a lot of times, we’ve seen you guys commercial with a guy mayhem. He’s not going to show up on your calendar. Is this gonna happen? That’s the whole point of the commercials, like, are you ready for mayhem to show up at your front door is not going to be a planned event. But you can count on Bradley and his team.

ADRIENNE: 
And I just want to also state that it’s like, you know, just like with Keller Williams or any other brands. Yeah, it’s you know, like, you know, Bradley is part of Allstate, but it’s Bradley in his team that really, you know, they show up at that moment of truth. Rarely,

ATTILIO: 
you know, I had a new acronym that I introduced in a past show. I’m going to reintroduce it in this show, but I’m reading a book called Never lose a customer again and And that’s Adrienne opening up on Heineken right now no sharpening up on Celsius is that we have business a business. We have business to customers, and the new one that everybody should think about is human being to human being when you went to that single mom’s house on Christmas Day, and she’s all freaking out. That wasn’t Allstate Insurance helping and insure it. That was Bradley Maruyama. Showing up for his customer showing up for that person. Yeah. human being to human being so good job on that badly.

BRADLEY: 
You know, it’s funny, it was a December 31 2013 When we put her up in exactly, it was a New Year’s Eve, it wasn’t Christmas. Oh, yeah, it was New

ATTILIO: 
Year’s Eve. Either way.

ADRIENNE: 
I mean, it’s the holidays.

ATTILIO: 
That most people when the clients call on that day, they all like, oh, man, I don’t know if I can come out right now barely say, I’ll be right there. Yeah. I’ll be there. He was even singing. You

ADRIENNE:
know, that was like 11 years ago. Yeah. 10 years ago,

ATTILIO: 
10 years ago. What else? Bradley?

BRADLEY: 
Yeah, you know. So, you know, it’s along the lines at the moment of truth. But I’ll tell you something we’ve been struggling with with our industry and but it’s important for the listeners to know Yeah.

Non renewal is becoming more and more common these days. Okay, so non renewals. I’m going to talk mainly with HO six or condo policy

ATTILIO: 
tell people with non renewal means what is non renewable, non renewable

BRADLEY: 
means XYZ carrier is no longer going to insure you till tomorrow to go and find something. How

ADRIENNE: 
much notice do they normally give you? Is it really like a short notice like that? Or is it? Well, it’s

ATTILIO: 
at the time of the renewal. So so this 30 days, one

BRADLEY: 
prospect had 60 days. And the agent said, you know, I’m pretty sure that we can get this approved because one of the claims wasn’t paid out. Well, it came down to January 13. And the non renewal was on the 14th. And the agent said, I got bad news. We aren’t going to renew you, even if zero was paid out last year. So we had a date to find insurance. And no one was because there’s two claims within three years. And it was a Friday afternoon at four o’clock, nobody was going to make an approval. So this poor guy had no insurance over a whole weekend because underwriters are gone. There’s two claims. And it took us two yesterday to find someone to even consider it. So when when we talk about the moment of truth, it’s not just when you file a claim. Hello, it also tell you that part of it is advising you that, you know, let’s look at the whole situation before putting this claim in. Because sometimes an $1,800 claim after $1,000 Deductible is paid, oh, yeah, you’re filing this claim for 800 bucks. Sometimes we have to do an assessment and say, Hey, we really want to go and file this claim. Or let’s go get an estimate. Let’s have water mitigation, dry up this unit. And let’s see what the scope of damage is going to be prior to me opening a claim. Yeah, I’ll let my agency knows so he can document this. But if it’s only going to be 1800 to $2,000 Maybe I’ll pay this one on a pocket. Yeah. And so this one insurance if I knew what the ramifications could have been maybe I wouldn’t have been so quick to just put in a claim.

ATTILIO: 
So you tell him slow down slow down Terry up.

ADRIENNE: 
So Bradley when this happens, where like, you know, they get dropped, and there’s a mortgage on the home. Can you talk a little bit about this lender placed insurance and the kind of costs that you can see with the lender placed insurance?

BRADLEY: 
Yes. Okay, so I’ve been seeing anywhere from 2500 to $6,000 for ForcePlates coverage. Yeah, okay. So what that means is the lender needs to make sure that if that house burns down and insured, covered

ATTILIO:
Yeah.

BRADLEY: 
Yeah, so most times you’re gonna force place i I’ll tell you that it’s been two weeks, and the lender still has not found someone to force place this policy. Oh, wow. So

ATTILIO: 
yeah, the regular kind of,

BRADLEY: 
yeah, I call it to Savio, who does a lot of AOL and sure insurance to like, oh, they don’t offer anything. So I was like, Man Where do I go? So we’re looking at a surplus lines carrier now for this individual, I won’t even get paid on it. Because I have to send it to a broker. But we may be looking at $3,300 a month for this ATM in a year for this neutral six months. Wow, I can get

ATTILIO: 
as appealing 3300 Because that’s for a year. I got it. I got H O six on my two investment properties. I don’t even imagine it being that high. What is it nor what was it before?

BRADLEY:
He was paying 280 89 I think for for the whole year

ATTILIO: 
289 230 300. Wow.

ADRIENNE: 
Now, is this like a common thing that we’re seeing? In a lot of a lot of situations? Or this is an unusual situation? No,

BRADLEY: 
it’s becoming more

ATTILIO: 
and more commonplace. It’s nothing, nothing to the building. I think I mean, folks, you got to here’s the deal. You’d be like this is baloney. And again, do that it’s in your mortgage, when you got the mortgage and you signed it, they’re not going to make put give you a mortgage. Right, Bradley, you know that we got to get the insurance binder from you before we can close a transaction. Not one lender on this planet is going to give you a mortgage on a property if you’re not properly insured. And so, I mean, I mean, just looking at the economics, is it just the amount of claims that are coming in, it’s not making it profitable for these carriers to have the premiums they’re collecting? Because of the amount of claims that are coming in? Is that the situation?

BRADLEY: 
That is the situation so I can give you an example just for our company in general? Yeah, we’re not writing any brand new H O six policies unless you were a renter and had renter’s insurance through us. That’s the only exception we’ve been making. But to give you an idea, for every dollar we take in, we were paying out two dogs, so very unknown.

ATTILIO:
That was That is a business that does is losing money.

BRADLEY: 
Not nothing. We’re not renewing anyone but but clean up the books. Yeah, we’re trying to clean it up. And it started when we started seeing these Association deductibles increase. So once upon a time 5000 or 10,000 for an association. deductible was pretty common. Now we’re seeing 50 and 75,000. What that means is the frequency and severity of claims and Kondal has gone up 1015 20 times on an HMO six policy because no longer is our association policy paying. Oh, 6806 that’s typically paying out on all these water damage.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, cuz he was six. Yeah, cuz I remember when I first bought my investment properties. I know nowadays, they they, I think most of the condos are requiring you to have the H O six. But when I bought my I had my stuff 1015 years ago, they weren’t I was like HLC was that. But it seems like because of all the claims through the AOL, the association insurance, they’re trying to like, hey, we need to spread some of his liability. Spin it around back to the condo owners. I guess there’s that that’s what’s happening there with these higher deductibles.

BRADLEY:
Yeah, so it started with associations right. There. We’re getting a harder and harder time finding a policy to cover the association. Yeah. And so carriers that creative well won’t insure your building with a higher deductible. Yeah. So in turn, no, your your loss assessment coverage or your building coverage now has to meet the requirement of 50,000. So, but it’s basically self insured insuring your unit for us to the first $50,000 worth of damage. Now a typical water damage claim for your unit will cost anywhere from four to $12,000. But now if there’s multiple units damage, oh, no, your interest six cars are responsible for 3040 50,000. Oh,

ATTILIO: 
yeah. And you got to keep in mind, the higher you know what, what comes with that nice view is the liability of all the condos in the stack below you we that’s how we know. Like all the plumbing, electrical, it’s it’s columns within the building. So if you have four units, beef, or floor, then whatever, if you’re on a corner, you know, everybody if you’re 20 stories up, you got 20 owners, right by No, yeah, I had a bot we had Adrian I had a bottom floor unit and pets at Punahou. People were like, where’s that? Anyway, we just remodeled the place and it was backing up. Not because of anything in our unit is because the units above we’re using the water, but there was a sewage line backup outside the unit. But then when the bet when it starts backing up, the water is not going to go all the way back up the column is going to come out at the lowest point of gravity, which is the ground floor unit. But that was fine. No, it was fine. We took care of it.

ADRIENNE: 
Anyway, badly we are nearing the end of our show. Is there any last words of wisdom? For our listeners before we let you go? Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
Besides call your

BRADLEY: 
words of wisdom, yeah. That you guys always end my my call with? Yes. Okay, give us a call. There’s there are people out there that do call or email us? Or policies, that’s the most important thing to do. Because you know, you are getting renewals and declaration pages. And some people say, wow, my agent never told me I needed this coverage. But if there was ever a complaint filed, they’re gonna say what did you ever look at your declaration page, you would have seen that you only have this amount of coverage. Review your policy is very important. Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
Review your policy,

ADRIENNE: 
review your policy. More importantly, review it with someone like Bradley actually just review it with Bradley. Bradley is

ATTILIO: 
let’s call him he’s like Paul Revere. Running down the street, in your condo, in the hallway going, you will eat your six insurance is going higher. Your HL six insurance is going higher. level on the British are coming. So.

ADRIENNE: 
Thank you. Thank you, Bradley, as always, excellent info. 

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