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When major disasters strike, a large amount of homeowners might not know where, exactly, they can turn for help. For this reason, many insurance agents might want to contact their clients before or during the potential problems and tell them about their options for any issues they might run into as a result of these events. However, they might also want to warn them of other possible problems that could crop up down the road.

One recent example of the potential right - and wrong - ways in which insurance agents can handle their relationships with clients came out of the greater San Diego area, where wildfires have threatened consumers' homes for some time now, according to a report from San Diego television station CW 6. As those fires raged, many insurance companies took the time to contact people whose properties were threatened, and informed them that anything they could do to help protect their families and belongings would be taken care of.

""I don't have anything to worry about if something happens to the house, God forbid, they are on top of things,"" Dean Toney, a homeowner and insurance policyholder who received such a call, told the station.

The downside of this issue
However, Toney later received another call from his insurance company alerting him to the fact that his home was now considered to be in danger of being affected by wildfires on an ongoing basis, and as such, his home insurance policy as it was currently constituted was being canceled, the report said. This obviously left him feeling more than a little put out, coming so soon as it did after a potentially major problem that could have severely damaged his home.

""It's not unusual, especially in wildfire areas to see an insurer who may have a concentration of business in the area to limit their underwriting, which means they start restricting how much business they have in a particular area,"" Nancy Kincaid, of the California Department of Insurance, told the station.

Insurance agents might therefore need to talk to their clients about the potential risks they may face when it comes to the possibility of such cancelations, and also talk about what measures can be taken to prevent the chance that this might happen. The more insurers can do to make sure that clients are aware of everything that's going on with their policies, the more satisfied consumers might be in general.

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