Tim Dillahunt, Head of Personal Lines Underwriting at The Hanover Insurance Group, shares over 25 years of insurance expertise. He emphasizes the emotional and financial toll of water damage in homes, advocating for proactive measures like water leak detection sensors. These devices not only prevent costly claims but also preserve personal belongings and maintain affordability. Tim highlights the importance of regular inspections and innovative technology in preventing water-related losses, transforming how we approach home safety and insurance.
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Water Losses are Major Risk
Non-weather water losses account for about 40% of excess catastrophe loss costs in homeowners insurance.
Only 17% of homes have water sensors compared to over 80% with smoke alarms, despite water leaks being 6-7 times more likely than fires.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Personal Story of Water Damage Impact
Tim shared a personal story of his 78-year-old father who had a washing machine hose burst and flood his home.
Although the insurer covered costs, he was displaced for two months, showing the emotional toll beyond financial loss.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Use Water Sensors Effectively
Basic water leak detection devices clip onto pipes to monitor pressure and temperature, alerting users to slow leaks often hidden behind walls.
Water sensors placed strategically in homes can promptly notify owners, enabling quick action even when they are away.
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Tim Dillahunt is the head of personal lines underwriting at the Hanover Insurance group. He is diverse insurance professional with an Underwriting, Marketing and Sales leadership background. Over 25 years of experience at some of the country's leading P&C Companies.
Highlights from the Show
When a pipe leaks, a hose breaks or some other preventable source of water damage to your home leads to a claim, you can rebuild, but you can never fully recover because of the likely loss of things like family photos and other personally valuable items. And while your insurer can cover the cost of fixing the damage, the emotional toll of being out of your home and dealing with the situation and uncertainty around it is also not something you can recover. That’s why Tim talks not just about the clear financial savings of using water leak detection and shutoff sensors, but also the innumerable personal savings that come with it.
Stopping claims by identifying water leaks proactively saves money for everyone. It can reduce the size of claims, reducing costs for insurers and helping insureds keep their rates from increasing. It keeps businesses open because they don’t need to close their facilities due to water damage or construction. And it reduces the overall cost to insure a pool of risks, helping keep rates lower for everyone. Tim talks about the many ways people and businesses can save from the use of simple water leak detection devices and help control one of the few forms of property claims we cannot easily control, unlike things like wind, flood, hail and wildfire.
What kinds of tools can you use to reduce your risk of having a homeowners claim because of a leak or burst pipe? Tim shares ideas from the most basic – a simple sensor that clips onto a pipe and can spot whether you have a slow leak or more catastrophic failure. You may be aware of a burst pipe without the sensor, but slow leaks often happen behind walls and in other hidden places you only notice once they’ve really spread, and may have lead to mold and other issues that are harder to contend with. And you could have avoided the whole thing with a simple solution.
What happens with a pipe bursts in a home or business? What about a museum. Tim shares their first hand experience when a museum that had leak detection sensors installed was able to act immediately when a pipe burst, shutting off the water and mopping up what got out before it ruined any of their extremely valuable artwork and other items. And while there may be a monetary value to the lost items, many may be irreplaceable – like family photos or heirlooms if the same thing happened in your home.
Water leak detection sensors can be simple and low-cost. A typical home may need $100 in sensors and $100 in monitoring services for those sensors. But what about the cost of a pipe or washing machine water hose leaking in your home? The Hanover sees that these claims average $7,000-10,000 or more, and could have all been avoided.
Why does Tim say, “Water sensors are the new smoke alarms”? About 40% of non-weather loss costs are caused by water. It is the single biggest cause of loss than any other non-weather cause. And yet less than 17% of homes have any type of water sensor, while 80%+ have smoke alarms despite those homes being 6-7x more likely to have a water loss than a fire.
Because of all of this, Tim is on a mission to educate people to change that 17% and stop people from suffering these losses.
This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance thought leadership series, available globally from Amazon in print, Kindle and Audible audiobook.
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