Affordable, high-quality homeowners insurance is becoming harder to find — in some places more than others, of course. So it's important for insureds to have access to information and resources to help them make informed policy decisions. This is where state insurance departments come can in. A recent report from the Rutgers Center for Risk and Responsibility at Rutgers Law School examined which state insurance departments are doing the best job of providing residents with information about what policies cover, how much they cost and the quality of the carrier. So what exactly should state insurance departments be doing to help residents with homeowners coverage? The Rutgers report suggests they should: |

• Post information on the department's website about the homeowners policies offered by all insurers in the state — or at least the largest insurers.
• Develop a standard form summary of homeowners insurance coverage, and then make that form available to consumers to use a checklist when shopping; require companies to complete the form for each available policy and make these completed forms available to homeowners who are shopping for insurance or upon their policy renewal; and post the companies' completed forms on the department's website.
• Post a tool that can compare premiums of different companies by policy type, geographic location and the amount of coverage.
• Publish consumer complaint data that is indexed in such a way as to show how each company's performance rates relative to the state average and other companies.
• Post information about insurance companies' records in paying claims.
• Design a department website that clearly presents useful information for homeowners.

With these standards in mind, Rutgers was able to rank the insurance departments for all U.S. states, as well as Washington, D.C. No state managed to achieve a perfect five-star rating, but the slideshow above illustrates which state insurance departments scored the highest when it comes to homeowner helpfulness.

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