Chubb Homeowners Insurance Review: Coverage, Pros & Cons

Who Is Chubb Insurance?

Chubb offers insurance for homes with an insurable value of over $1,000,000.  

Keep that number in mind.  

Your home’s insurable value is different from its purchase price.

The purchase price includes the value of the land it sits on.

The insurable value is coverage only for the structure.

So, we are looking at insurance for really big homes, typically owned by folks who have experienced some financial success in life. 

What Homeowners Insurance Coverages Does Chubb Offer?

As you might expect, homeowners insurance from Chubb is some of the best coverage available on the market.

Chubb is truly a best-in-class insurance company. Even when strictly comparing their offers to those in the higher end of the homeowners insurance marketplace, Chubb stands apart in a class all its own.

As a client of Chubb, you maintain a certain level of comfort after a claim. 

Other insurance companies make the claims process a burden on their clients' lives.

Chubb understands that their clients are very busy and don’t have time to spend haggling or fighting over a claim.

The class of individual who uses Chubb for their homeowners insurance is less concerned with the bottom dollar and more concerned with the way they will be treated by their insurance provider.

Chubb's "Good Egg" Score:  How We Rate Chubb

In researching the National Association of Insurance Commissioner’s website, I found 76 total complaints filed against Chubb’s homeowners insurance company in 2019.

Of these, 15 had to do with claims handling.

17 complaints were for misrepresentation by the insurance agent.

I assume this is because most Chubb policies are sold by independent agents, who deal with so many different insurance companies, they may give a client inaccurate information.

When considering Chubb for your personal insurance, make sure your insurance agency has a decent number of clients with them.

This increased familiarity will help you avoid working with agents who don’t know the Chubb policy very well.

In analyzing the amount of complaints vs. the validity of those complaints, I find Chubb to be very fair in their dealings with customers.  

Insurance is a tough business to get right and even insurance company people make mistakes from time to time, but the general vibe amongst most is that Chubb is a great company to have insure your home.

Chubb BBB Reviews

Chubb is not BBB accredited.  

Chubb is under-represented on the BBB website.  They only have a single review, posted by someone complaining about their auto insurance settlement.

The BBB gives Chubb an A+.

Pros And Cons Of Chubb Homeowners Insurance

Here are some advantages of doing business with Chubb along with some disadvantages.

Chubb is really in the botique service business.  They cost a lot more and are generally a good company for wealthier folks.  You can't really compare them price-wise to companies like Progressive, All State, or State Farm since it's not really an apples to apples comparison.

They find Chubb to have a diversified risk spread and plenty of money in the bank.

Standard and Poor’s has awarded Chubb with a AA Rating. This is a “very strong” rating from S&P.

Note that A+ is the second best rating A.M. Best offers.  It means their ability to meet ongoing claims obligations is excellent.

BEST-IN-CLASS CUSTOMER SERVICE STARTS ON DAY ONE.

Before telling you about the policy and how it's arranged, I should let you know about the service.

When you become a Chubb client, they will send an expert to your home to help you determine its “replacement cost”.  

This could more accurately be called the “rebuilding cost” of your home.  

This is a difficult amount for anyone to determine. 

Construction costs change and the cost of building materials can change from year to year.  

Having a Chubb representative come out to your home and do a walk through will enable them to better understand your unique needs.  

Claims handling: Typically prompt 

Speaking of claims.  They don’t squabble over costs nearly as much as other insurance Companies.  If you are insured by Chubb and life throws you a curveball, they are going to hit it out of the park for you.  Not much to worry about. 

Chubb is known in the insurance business for paying promptly to make sure their clients are quickly assisted.

Chubb Homeowners Insurance gets a high overall score because they do a really good job of insuring large homes. 

They’ve built a set of services around their policy to give their customers great customer service.  

They charge more premium than their competitors because they offer more coverage and more services, which are geared towards working with clients who demand more.  

It has unique coverage that was created to fit the needs with a lot of money.

Chubb is not the cheapest policy.

If you want a lower priced option because you don’t want to spend the money on a policy you may never use, then you should look for other quotes.

If you value time more than the lowest priced homeowners insurance, 

Chubb may be a good option.  

Chubb's Wildfire Defense Protection

SPECIFIC TYPES OF COVERAGE: STRUCTURES, POSSESSIONS AND MORE

Coverage for the Dwelling Structure Itself:  An “All Risks” coverage form gives you the broadest policy available.

Extended Replacement Cost provides you with up to 200% of the insured value of the home, should a claim exceed the amount of coverage carried at the time loss.

Historic Homes are difficult to insure.  If you own one, you should consider Chubb.

Why?  Because Building Code Coverage through Chubb is very robust. 

They will pay up to 100% of the insured value of the structure to upgrade undamaged parts of the dwelling to current code.  This is unmatched by the competition in the homeowners insurance marketplace.  

Coverage for your possessions:  Chubb offers an “All Risks” coverage form. 

This is simply the best available option when it comes to coverage.  

“All Risks” Insurance Policy:  Are not really going to cover “all risks”.  This type of policy does provide more coverage than other policy types, but it still is going to exclude earthquakes or surface water flooding.  It provides coverage for most major claim types.  

Examples:  wind, fire, theft, burst pipes, hail, riots and civil unrest, and vandalism.  The two major causes of loss not covered by any All Risks policy are earthquake and surface water flooding ( from storm surge or a river overflowing its banks).

Since Chubb homeowners insurance is built to handle the items you might own as asuccessful individuals, they offer higher basic limits on things like cash, jewelry, collectables, or guns.  

Of course you should always consider insuring valuables with a specific Valuable Articles Policy.    

Coverage for loss of use:  Also known as “temporary living expenses”.  

Chubb pays for their insured to stay in a home similar to the one they normally occupy while their home is being repaired. This is a huge selling point.  

If your home is damaged or destroyed, it could take months or even years to repair.

If your home is in a nice community, rental properties of a similar size and location to your permanent home will be very high priced.

I’ve had clients rent properties for $20,000 a month while their primary dwelling was repaired.  This was covered by Chubb and matched the cost of the repairs in terms of claims dollars spent. 

Liability:  A highlight of the Chubb policy is their inclusion of Personal Injury (libel & slander) coverage.  

Libel and Slander claims are excluded by the majority of homeowners insurance companies.  

Incidental Business in the Home.  Since many Chubb policy holders own businesses,they’ve arranged their policy to cover accidents related to the conduct of business in the home. 

Again, most other homeowners insurers do not extend coverage to business operations at home.

Chubb is willing to offer unusually high levels of liability protection via their Personal Umbrella policy.  Up to $50,000,000 in coverage.

Unattached structures coverage:  Pool house, guest quarters, or other outbuildings.  

Chubb Homeowners policy offers a double the limit of coverage for unattached structures in comparison to other policies on the market today.

Medical Payments:  Chubb offers a $10,000 limit for small medical payment claims.  

This is a Liability type coverage, meant to protect the homeowner from injuries of invited and uninvited guests.

This is a “good will” type coverage, where you are able to have a smaller bodily injury claim settled within days, rather than weeks of filing it.

Most other insurance companies offer $5,000 in medical payments coverage.

The Valuable Articles coverage offered by Chubb is automatically included at a very high level:

Newly acquired Items, such as jewelry, furs, cameras, or musical instruments:  25% of the itemized amount and up to $50,000 per category.

Fine Arts Breakage: is included by Chubb (this is excluded by most standard home insurers).

Unique lines of coverage offered by chubb

Chubb also offers unique “family protection” lines of coverage:

Carjacking:  $215,000 for related expenses

Home Invasion:  $225,000 for related expenses

Child Abduction: $300,000 for costs resulting from abduction of a child under 13.

Stalking Threat:  $25,000 for security measures

Accidental Death and Dismemberment:  $250,000 per occurrence per individual for home invasions, child abduction, or carjacking.

Does Chubb Offer Discounts?

Everyone loves a discount.  Chubb offers these discounts:

• Multi Policy:  7.5% 

• Loyalty:  4%

• Loss Free 

• Fire Suppression Sprinkler System:  10%

• Gated Community:  5%

• Patrol Service response to burglar alarms:  5%

• Water Flow Alarm on sprinkler system:  2%

• New home or renovated home:  17% to 24%

These can really add up and make Chubb a very reasonably priced homeowners insurance company.

Your insurance professional will be able to provide additional information on discounts you may qualify to receive.

Does Chubb Offer Discounts?

Kidnap and Ransom: this  covers the cost to recover your loved ones should they be taken hostage for ransom.  

Replacement Cost Cash Out Option:  this additional coverage will allow you to take a cash settlement instead of rebuilding in the same location.

Some folks may choose to relocate after their home is destroyed.  Chubb understands, so they write a check for the insured value of the home so the policy holder can rebuild somewhere new.

Blanket Coverage:  some folks own more than one home.  If this is you, then “blanket” coverage for all of your homes is a great way to increase coverage on the various structures.  By applying this additional coverage, you will have the total amount of coverage for all of your homes combined to cover the loss at one location.  

For example:  Your primary home in Laguna Beach is insured for $3,000,000.  The condo on Maui is insured for $400,000.  And your ski lodge in Park City is insured for $1,700,000.  Using the blanket coverage, all three structures are insured for $5,100,000 because you have added up all three insured limits to form a single ‘blanket limit’ them.

This is a common way for commercial property to be insured, but Chubb is one of the only to insure homes this way.

how Much Does Chubb Home Insurance Cost?

A 7,600 square foot home, covered for just over $3,500,000 in insured value, can be 

insured for as little as $7,600 a year.  That is with discounts applied. 

Without discounts, the premium could be around $9,800.