COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – It can be a tough market when it comes to insurance costs.
Whether it is in the personalized or the commercialized market it has been a challenge for businesses and homeowners to afford the insurance.
According to the Sun Herald, the average cost for homeowners insurance is nearly $4,000 in Mississippi which drastically more than the national average.
“We know homeowners insurance and also business insurance, all of them are fluctuating even at this time with the economy struggling,” Joe Baldwin said. “So you look for the increase over in that.”
Factors that may contribute to the increase can be inflation, labor shortages, or rising construction costs.
Brandt Galloway has been an insurance agent for nearly 25 years.
Even though this can be on the national level of concern, Galloway says some local factors can come into play.
“You see a lot of catastrophic claims and we’ve had a lot of frequency of claims even locally,” Galloway said. “A lot of hail storms and wind storms. But then you are seeing all the not as quite frequent in the state of Mississippi, we’ve some pretty severe storms as well. Whether that’s in Amory or Rolling Fork. We’ve some catastrophic claims in our state.”
Store owner, Joe Baldwin said with the frequency of natural disasters in the it is still essential to have insurance despite the rising cost.
“Anytime you have a natural disaster or anything, it’s liable to happen,” Baldwin said. “So you must want to have that insurance to be able to cover you. I’ve been doing pretty good as far as just not filing for small things to keep my insurance from going up.”
Galloway said there are still ways to avoid dealing with alarming insurance expenses.
“Particularly on the commercial side and on the personalized side it’s some of the same things that apply if you are willing to take a larger deductible, it helps with the premium,” Galloway said. “We certainly as an independent agent represent several insurance companies; quite a few. We can go shop those coverages out and find the best terms and conditions in the marketplace.”
With gathering data from Marketplace, around 80% of home or business owners have insurance on their property.
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Based in New York, Stephen Freeman is a Senior Editor at Trending Insurance News. Previously he has worked for Forbes and The Huffington Post. Steven is a graduate of Risk Management at the University of New York.