Tower Hill Homeowners Insurance Review

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Tower Hill

OVERALL

7.5

THE GOOD

Comprehensive coverage offerings

Flood endorsement option for your policy

Excellent customer service

THE BAD

No instant quote option on the website

Currently only available in a handful of states

Not much information about home coverage options on website

THE BOTTOM LINE

The Sunshine State is no stranger to catastrophic tropical weather, and homes close to the coast face the omnipresent risk of windstorm and hurricane-related damage. Very few Florida insurers are equipped to cover costly risks as well as Tower Hill Insurance. Tower Hill is one of the more versatile home insurance companies in Florida, featuring two highly customizable policy options for your home — one for low to mid-value homes, and one for high-value homes up to $5 million. Tower Hill also offers flood insurance, which is offered both as a standalone policy or an endorsement to your home policy. If you get Tower Hill’s flood endorsement, they’ll package the flood coverage under one bill instead of two if you get a standalone plan.

Cost

8.0

Confidence

8.5

Customer ratings

6.5

Policy options

6.5

Customer experience

7.6

TOWER HILL COMPANY SPOTLIGHT

N/A

J.D. Power Rating

A trusted customer satisfaction and product quality research agency

A+

BBB Rating

A nonprofit organization focusing on marketplace trust and product quality

A-

A.M. Best

100-year-old U.S. credit rating agency focused on the insurance industry

The Bottom Line

Tower Hill is one of the premier homeowners insurance companies in Florida, offering the complete package of property insurance protection — from homeowners insurance to flood insurance — to protect your home and personal property. When it comes to claims, Tower Hill is well-positioned to handle every type of loss. The company has dedicated teams for all causes of claims, from the most minor to most egregious claims. However, Tower Hill, like many other Florida insurers, is in somewhat of a precarious position financially. They have an A- (Excellent) rating with insurance credit agency A.M. Best – a very good rating by any standard – but Best’s financial outlook for Tower Hill was reported as “negative,” which indicates that based on industry trends, Tower Hill could see a dip in their credit rating in the future.

The Details

The Good

Comprehensive coverage offerings. Tower Hill offers two comprehensive coverage options — one is for mid-sized homes and one is for high-value properties that need additional protection. Homeowners can also choose to add coverage endorsements — from water backup coverage to flood coverage to scheduled personal property coverage — individual or through its endorsement packages (Emerald Coverage and Emerald Coverage Deluxe).

Flood endorsement option for your policy. Most insurance companies offer government flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program. Tower Hill offers NFIP coverage too, but they also service their own private flood insurance as well, both as a standalone coverage option or as a flood insurance endorsement that you can add to your homeowners insurance. With the Tower Hill flood endorsement, if your home is damaged by, say a windstorm and flooding during the same tropical storm, you're able to file a single insurance claim.

Excellent customer service. Tower Hill also features unbeatable customer service. The insurer holds down an A+ and a 4 out of 5 customer rating with the Better Business Bureau. While scoring an A+ with the BBB is fairly typical for a big company, the high customer ratings aren't common for an insurance company.

The Bad

No instant quote option on the website. Once you wrap up the online portion of your application with Tower Hill, you're instructed to call an insurance agent to complete the process. While it does provide a rough quoting estimate, it's based off of very base-level information and doesn't appear to be entirely accurate.

Currently only available in a handful of states. Tower Hill homeowners insurance is rather limited, servicing only Florida for standard homeowners insurance and a handful of other states for high-value home insurance and commercial coverage.

Not much information about home coverage options on website. Tower Hill doesn't provide much information about its base coverages or coverage endorsements online.

Cost

8.0

The price of homeowners insurance can vary considerably from state to state and house to house. While Tower Hill rates are higher than the average quoted policy with Policygenius, they're still among the most competitive in the industry in terms of cost. Homeowners who received a Tower Hill quote with Policygenius were quoted a $1,914 average annual premium.

Your rates are particularly impacted by the amount of coverage in your policy. Below is the average cost of homeowners insurance at different levels of coverage with Tower Hill.

Average annual homeowners insurance premiums for each coverage level were calculated using Policygenius quoting data.

Discounts

A great way to keep your homeowners insurance costs down is to take advantage of discount opportunities.

Some common discounts include protective devices discounts, claims-free discounts, and new home-buyer discounts. Tower Hill offers most of the standard discounts as well as a multi-policy discount if you get more than one property insurance policy with Tower Hill.

• Auto/home discount - Save 5% when you pair your home policy with an auto policy from a Tower Hill partner

• Central station fire & smoke alarm - Get 5% off your policy if your home fire alarm is linked to a local fire station

• Central station burglar alarm discount - Discount of 5% if your security system is linked to your police station

• Smoke or burglar alarm discount - Save 2% if your home is fitted with a standard smoke or burglar alarm that isn’t linked to local authorities

• Deadbolts, smoke alarm & fire extinguisher discount - 5% bill reduction if your home has deadbolts, a smoke alarm, and a fire extinguisher

• Claims-free discount - 20% off if you haven’t made a chargeable claim in the last three years

• Paid-in-full discount - 5% off if you pay your premiums for the year in one lump-sum payment

• Paperless discount - 1% discount when you opt for paperless billing

Confidence

8.5

Homeowners insurance protects your most important financial assets, so you'll want to be sure you're insuring your home, your personal possessions, and other assets with a company that will be able to pay out your claim in the event of a disaster. Tower Hill has been around almost 50 years and has well-established financial strength with A.M. Best, the top credit rating agency for insurance companies in the world.

• Year founded: 1972

• Standard & Poor's rating: N/A

• Moody's rating: N/A

• A.M. Best rating: A-

Standard & Poor's measures companies' creditworthiness and is used primarily by financial investors and other market stakeholders. S&P is also valuable in measuring the long-term financial stability of insurance companies. A AAA rating is the highest issuer credit rating assigned by S&P. Tower Hill does not currently have a rating from S&P.

Moody's is very similar to Standard & Poors, except rather than measuring a companies ability to remain financial stable and creditworthy, Moody's measures what the expected losses would be if a company were to go into default. It's particularly valuable in analyzing the value of stocks and bonds with certain companies. A rating of AAA is the highest possible score you can receive from Moody's. Tower Hill does not currently have a rating from Moody's.

A.M. Best is the most reliable credit-rating tool insureds can use to gauge the financial health of a particular company. Unlike S&P and Moody's, A.M. Best is focused exclusively on the insurance marketplace. A good score with A.M. Best means a company is more likely to fulfill their financial obligation to you when it comes time to file a claim. With a score of A-, Tower Hill has the fourth highest rating a company can receive with A.M. Best.

Customer ratings

6.5

It's important to know what experts think about homeowners insurance companies - but it's also good to know what actual customers and consumer sentiment sites are saying, too.

Tower Hill doesn't currently have ratings with J.D. Power, Consumer Affairs, Consumer Advocate, or Trustpilot, but it has a current score of A+ (and a 4 out of 5 customer rating) with the Better Business Bureau. It falters in other areas, however, like the NAIC's complaint index where it scores a 4.17.

• J.D. Power: N/A

• BBB: A+

• Consumer Affairs: N/A

• Consumers Advocate: N/A

• Trustpilot: N/A

• NAIC complaint index: 4.17

J.D. Power provides studies that rate insurance companies across policy offerings, price, clarity of billing and policy information, interaction, and claims. An overall satisfaction score, "based on how customers view every experience of their experience with homeowners insurance providers," is reflected here and used for our ranking.

The Better Business Bureau ranks companies across a large swath of criteria. While consumers can submit ratings to the BBB, these scores are not taken into account in their rating, although tangential metrics that take into account customer experience are.

Consumer Affairs is a platform that lets consumers directly rate customers, while Consumers Advocate rates companies based on stability, reputation, and policy coverage.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners tracks the number of complaints submitted to state insurance departments with their national complain index. A score of 1 is the baseline average, and a score of 0 means there weren't enough complaints to count. Tower Hill's 2018 score of 4.17 means they received more complaints than the average company. That may seem high, but keep in mind their large customer base.

Policy options

6.5

Tower Hill offers two types of home insurance coverage tiers — a base policy, and their Imperial Shield policy for high-value homes.

Tower Hill’s standard policy protects your home with all of your common coverages, along with replacement cost value for your home, optional replacement cost value for your personal belongings, and a number of optional coverage endorsements, like water backup coverage, loss assessment coverage, and ordinance or law coverage.

With Tower Hill Imperial Shield, you have all of your standard coverages but with higher levels of coverage and additional coverages, like scheduled personal property and identity fraud protection.

Tower Hill also gives you the option of upgrading your base policy coverage through a package of endorsements called their Emerald coverages. With Emerald coverages, you have increased coverage limits on rare and expensive valuables and broadened liability coverages.

Base policy

• Replacement cost value dwelling coverage

• Coverage for most types of water damage

• $10,000 in mold coverage

• Up to $3,000 in loss assessment coverage

• Optional Emerald Coverage and Emerald Coverage Deluxe endorsement

Imperial Shield

• 20% to 50% extended replacement cost for dwelling, other structures, and personal property

• Scheduled personal property coverage up to 50% of personal property coverage, up to $1 million

• Up to $50,000 in loss assessment coverage

• Landscaping coverage at 5% of dwelling coverage, $2,500 per item

• $10,000 credit card, forgery, counterfeit money coverage

• $15,000 identity fraud expense coverage

• Personal liability limits up to $1 million

• Deductible options up to $50,000

• Deductible waiver for losses over $50,000

Customer experience

7.6

Tower Hill homeowners insurnace is available in Florida and offers specialty lines and their high-value home insurance product in a handful of other states. From a user experience standpoint, Tower Hill has numerous educational tools to manage your policy and website and mobile claim-filing, but it lacks a complete online application.

State availability

Tower Hill's standard homeowners insurance product is currently only availabe in Florida.

Digital tools

Tower Hill features online policy management, bill pay, and a mobile app.

The application

Tower Hill's application process is partially done on the web and partially through a broker who you call after you input your name, address, and email. Before the web portion of your application is complete, Tower Hill will send you a rough quote estimate based on your home's estimated replacement cost.

To finish your Tower Hill application, access the agency search function from the website’s resources tab to find a partnering broker nearest you. You can also apply for Tower Hill policies through Policygenius.

Ease of claims

While Tower Hill’s web application process seems unwieldy, their claims fare a little better. If you’re a Tower Hill customer, you can access the insurer’s claims portal by logging in online. You can also make claims through Tower Hills mobile app and their 24/7 claims hotline.

Additional claims service

• 24/7 claims service

• Claim repairs and construction

• Mobile app claims

• Special disaster claim processing

Payment methods

• Automatic online payments through your checking account

• One-time phone payments

• Recurring credit card payments

Policygenius offers insurance policies from many of the nation's top insurers, who pay us a commission for our services. However, all editorial choices are made independently.