Insurance carriers use a wide array of variables to determine your premium for every type of policy out there. For life insurance, some of the basic factors include your age, past medical conditions, and tobacco use. For Auto insurance, there are other factors, like your driving history, and the type of vehicle you drive. When it comes to Homeowner’s insurance, there are a variety of obvious, as well as little-known factors, that all contribute to the premium. Some of these are the age of the home, its style of construction, and whether you have a home security system. One factor that insurance carriers use that is rarely discussed by most consumers is something called “Public Protection Class”. The Public Protection Class, or PPC, is a rating provided by the Insurance Services Organization, known as the ISO, that indicates the level of protection by the fire department for your area. The rating is on a scale of 1-10. According to the ISO: “A PPC of 1 represents a superior level of property fire protection. A PPC of 10 indicates that the area’s fire suppression program doesn’t meet our minimum criteria.”

The PPC is based on many variables that the ISO evaluates. They explain their process in an interview on their site, which can be found in full here. According to the article, here are a few examples of what they look at when determining PPC: “For example, when we evaluate a fire department, we look at equipment, staffing, training, and geographic deployment of fire companies. When we evaluate water supply, we inspect hydrants and conduct flow tests. And for emergency communications, we evaluate dispatch facilities”

Taking into consideration all of these factors, the ISO assigns a PPC rating to a given area. Of course, the factors listed above can change. An increase in the staffing level of a fire department, or more advanced equipment can help improve the rating.

Often, new developments do not have adequate fire protection at first, leaving homeowners with a poor PPC rating until a new fire station can be built and evaluated by the ISO. Once this happens, your homeowner’s insurance rates should automatically go down, right?

The answer is that they should, but that does not always happen. Some carriers will get much more frequent updates of the protection class ratings from the ISO, and apply them to their policies upon renewal. Others are not as quick to make the update, and your rates could be unnecessarily high as a result if this is the case with your company. Each carrier has their own process, and it can be difficult to predict how they will make these updates as PPC ratings change. In any case though, a carrier could miss a new change, and your policy and premiums will not reflect that new protection class rating if that happens to be your carrier.

If you think you have a change to your protection class rating, the best thing to do is talk to a local agent who can work with both you and the insurance carriers to get your coverage updated to reflect the better rates. A simple call is all it takes to find out if your rating has improved, and get your coverage updated to reflect that.

The Ferguson Insurance Team is hear to answer your questions, and help you save on your homeowners insurance. Give us a call at 843-797-7285.