Oregon Insurance Resources

Why is it challenging to find good local resources?

There are a few basic reasons we can see that insurance resources are typically not local.

First, most insurance companies orient their public-facing website materials to a broad national audience. While there is a lot of insurance overlap between states, the reality is that policies are rated, written, and adjusted at the state level, under state laws (our “laboratories of democracy”).

For example, your car insurance policy is an Oregon policy. Accordingly, it has a certain amount of Personal Insurance Protection (PIP) included by law. But other states have different requirements and coverages. Moreover, insurers may have different policies they sell in the same state, with different endorsements and levels of benefits.

Second, most major financial information websites such as nerdwallet.com or bankrate.com, orient their content to a national audience as well.

I’ve occasionally found useful information in such places. However, again, that model has the effect of generalizing information at a national level. (And leading us to endless calculators that somehow nearly always lead to a credit card offer, mortgage loan, or insurance quotes from some national platform.)

Chat GPT and similar generative AI will in all likelihood not help at least for the foreseeable future. Many companies have begun using such models to generate their website, newsletter, and email content. But of course, what have most of these models been trained on? National general information.

All that to say, . . .

We’re doing our best to be a local resource because that’s where we and our clients live. If you have an idea of what might be more helpful, drop us a line.