Are Home Insurance Claims Public Record?
No, but insurers share claims history through a database called CLUE, and future insurers can pull your report when you apply.
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What CLUE actually holds
CLUE stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange. It lists claims tied to your house and to you as a policyholder going back seven years, including the type of loss and amount paid. It isn't public like a court record, but any insurer you apply to can pull it.
Why your letter mentions claims
If your non-renewal or cancellation letter cites claims history, the insurer already looked at your CLUE report. A new insurer will see the same report, so the claims that triggered this letter will come up again when you apply elsewhere.
Checking your own report
You can request your CLUE report yourself, usually at no cost once a year, through LexisNexis, the company that maintains it. Reading it before you apply elsewhere tells you exactly what a new insurer will see and whether anything on it is wrong.
What this means for shopping
Claims history on file doesn't bar you from coverage, but it shapes which insurers will write your policy and what they charge. Insurers weigh claims differently, so the one that dropped you isn't a sign every insurer will.
Your CLUE report isn't the only answer
The insurer that dropped you weighed your claims one way. Others weigh them differently, and some will write your policy at a price worth seeing before your coverage ends.
What else can show up when an insurer checks you out
CLUE is the main report insurers pull, but it isn't the only thing they look at when you apply. Most will also check your credit-based insurance score, which is different from the credit score a lender sees. In most states this score factors into both whether you're approved and what you pay. A few states, including California and Massachusetts, don't allow insurers to use it at all.
Insurers also look at the house itself, separately from your claims history. The roof's age, the age of the wiring and plumbing, and the home's general condition all get weighed alongside what's in your CLUE report. If your non-renewal letter mentioned the roof or the age of the house rather than a claim, that's a property issue, not something that will show up when a new insurer pulls your file. It's also something a new insurer will check again, so fixing it or documenting its condition before you apply can matter as much as explaining a claim.
Public adjuster involvement, prior lapses in coverage, and how long you've lived in the house can come up too, depending on the insurer. None of this is secret or hidden from you. Anything that factors into a decision to decline or charge more has to be disclosed if you ask, and an adverse action notice, if you get one, will say which report or factor drove it.
None of these checks mean the same thing to every company. One insurer might weight a single water damage claim heavily and barely look at your credit-based score. Another might do the opposite. That's part of why shopping around after a non-renewal tends to turn up real differences in price and willingness to write the policy, not just small variations on the same offer.
Can you get a claim taken off your record
Once a claim is paid, it stays on your CLUE report for seven years. There's no process to get it removed early, even if the amount was small or you paid out of pocket to cover the rest. The seven-year clock starts from the date of loss, not the date the letter arrived or the date you switched insurers.
You can keep a claim off CLUE in the first place by not filing one. If damage is minor and the repair cost is close to your deductible, paying for it yourself means no claim ever gets reported. This only works before you file. Once an insurer opens a claim file and makes any payment, even a small one, it's on your record whether or not you'd rather it wasn't.
A claim that was denied still shows up on CLUE as an entry, even though no money changed hands. If you believe a claim on your report is wrong, tied to the wrong property, or lists an incorrect amount, you can dispute it with LexisNexis directly. They're required to investigate and correct errors, similar to how a credit bureau handles a dispute.
Some states limit how far back an insurer can look when deciding whether to write a policy, even though the report itself covers seven years. A claim from six years ago might not count against you in one state the way it would in another. This is separate from the report's length and comes down to each state's own rules, so what a new insurer actually weighs can be narrower than everything CLUE shows.
Before you apply again
Pull your CLUE report and read it line by line. Confirm every claim listed is accurate and tied to the right property, and dispute anything that isn't before a new insurer sees it.
