What Information Is Included in a CLUE Report?
It lists claims filed on the house for several years, with dates, types, amounts paid, and who filed.
Free to compare
Why your renewal went up
A CLUE report only lists claims, not rate decisions. If yours is clean, the increase likely comes from rebuilding costs, local claims trends, or your insurer's broader pricing changes, not anything tied to your house specifically.
Claims tied to the house
CLUE tracks the property, not the person. If a past owner filed a claim before you bought the house, it can still show up on the report and may factor into what you're quoted or renewed at.
What dates and amounts show
Each entry lists when the claim was filed, the type of loss like water or wind, and what the insurer paid out. A small paid amount still counts as a claim, even one you barely remember filing.
Checking your own report
You can request your CLUE report directly and review it for errors, like a claim listed twice or one that never involved a payout. A mistake there is worth correcting before you compare other insurers.
A clean CLUE report means the increase is coming from pricing decisions, not your claims history, and other insurers weigh those factors differently. One company's rebuilding cost estimates or local claims trends might not move your rate the way your current insurer's did. Since nothing about your house changed, comparing what others would charge for the same coverage is the only way to see if this increase is fair.
What else shows up on a CLUE report
A CLUE report covers more than the basic facts of each claim. Alongside the date, type, and amount paid, it usually includes the insurer that paid the claim, the policy number tied to it, and a description of what happened, often a line or two pulled from the claim file. If a claim was filed but closed without a payout, that typically shows too, marked as a zero-dollar or denied claim.
The report also lists claims by address, which is why it follows the house rather than you. It pulls from a seven-year window, so anything older usually drops off. If you've lived in the house less than seven years, your report can still include claims filed by the previous owner during that window, since the record is tied to the property itself.
One thing a CLUE report does not include is why a claim was paid at a certain amount, or any notes about whether the damage was fully repaired. It's a record that a claim happened, not a history of the house's condition. If you want to know whether past damage was properly fixed, that's a question for a home inspection, not the CLUE report.
Catastrophe claims, like widespread damage from a hurricane or hailstorm that hit an entire region, are sometimes excluded or flagged separately, since insurers don't usually treat those the same way they treat an individual claim tied to one house. If your only claim was from a declared catastrophe, it's worth checking how it's labeled, since that can affect how much weight it carries when you're quoted elsewhere.
Who can actually pull your CLUE report
Not just anyone can request it. CLUE reports are available to the homeowner the property belongs to, and to insurers who have a reason tied to underwriting or renewing a policy on that house. A real estate agent selling the house can't pull it on your behalf. Neither can a contractor or a curious neighbor. If you want your own copy, you request it yourself, typically through the two major consumer reporting agencies that compile this data from insurers.
Insurers check CLUE at a few specific points. One is when you first apply for a policy, since it tells them what claims history comes with the house before they agree to cover it. Another is at renewal, though not every insurer rechecks every year. Some pull it only when something changes, like a new policy, a change in coverage, or a claim you just filed. That's part of why a clean CLUE report doesn't guarantee a flat renewal. The report is one input, checked on the insurer's schedule, not something priced against every single year.
There's also a difference between requesting your report and disputing what's on it. Requesting it just gets you the document, usually within a few days. Disputing an error is a separate process. If you find a claim that was actually filed at a different address, or one that shows a payout when none was made, you correct it through the agency that issued the report. That typically means submitting a dispute with documentation, similar to correcting an error on a credit report, and it can take several weeks to resolve.
A claim you called in but never filed doesn't show up on the report. Insurers sometimes call this a claim inquiry, where you ask a question about coverage without filing paperwork. If you're not sure whether something you reported years ago turned into an actual claim, your CLUE report is the way to find out for certain. That beats guessing based on what you remember telling the insurer at the time.
Before you compare
Pull your own CLUE report and check it against what you remember filing. If anything looks off, like a duplicate or a claim with no payout, that's worth fixing before quotes come back.
