Smarter Service, Stronger Relationships: How Rafter Helps Insurers Deepen Policyholder Trust and Risk Insight

July 21, 2025

The Missed Frontier in Insurance Innovation


Technology has transformed many aspects of the property insurance industry. Pricing is increasingly precise. Underwriting is faster and more data-informed. Claims processing is often more automated than ever before. Yet, in one critical area, little has changed: the experience of the homeowner.


For most policyholders, their insurance company is something they interact with only when something goes wrong. That interaction, unfortunately, often feels impersonal or adversarial. A problem has occurred, a claim is filed, and a process begins, one that may be unfamiliar, confusing, or frustrating for the customer.


This is more than a customer service issue. It's a missed strategic opportunity.


When the only engagement between a policyholder and their insurer happens during or after a loss, the relationship is, by design, reactive. It leaves value on the table for both parties in preventable loss, unaddressed risk, and unrealized trust.


The Reality at Home: A Complex System with Little Support


Ask a typical homeowner about managing their home and you’ll often hear some version of this: 


“I had no idea how much there was to stay on top of.”


And it's true. A single-family home is a highly complex asset made up of dozens of systems and hundreds of components: plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliances, roofing, safety equipment, and more. Each comes with its own maintenance schedule, potential failure points, and safety implications.




Most homeowners want to care for their homes responsibly. But they’re overwhelmed. They don’t have an instruction manual. And no one, not their insurer, lender, or home inspector, is providing them with a clear roadmap for what to do and when.


Why does this matter to insurers? Because that lack of clarity and support contributes directly to preventable claims.


Here are some of the structural challenges homeowners face:

  • Home data is fragmented or missing. There's no shared record of what’s been maintained, replaced, or ignored. Information is often locked away in inspection reports or lost entirely. Without this foundation, proactive insight is nearly impossible.


  • Everything is reactive. Maintenance often happens after something breaks, not before. Homeowners scramble to find a plumber, electrician, or roofer only once the issue has become urgent.


  • No preventive infrastructure exists. While other industries (like healthcare or auto) offer standardized schedules for checkups and care, homeownership lacks a trusted system to encourage and support preventive behavior.


  • Incentives are unclear or hard to access. Even when insurers offer premium discounts or incentives for risk reduction, homeowners often aren’t aware of them, or don’t know how to take advantage.


  • Trust is low across the ecosystem. Whether they’re hiring contractors or navigating claims, many homeowners feel unsupported. Insurance, while essential, is still perceived by some as a safety net rather than a proactive partner.


The Consequences for Insurers


This reality at the household level adds up to significant challenges for insurers.

  • Preventable losses go unaddressed. Without visibility into the real-time condition of the home, insurers often learn about risks only after they’ve turned into expensive claims.


  • Engagement remains transactional. Most policyholders have few, if any, meaningful interactions with their carrier. Loyalty is thin. Retention becomes more sensitive to price and competitors.


  • Innovation hits a ceiling. Even as carriers invest in AI-enhanced underwriting and smart segmentation tools, the lack of structured, current data from the home limits what those technologies can deliver.


In other words, the industry has built smarter systems. But it’s still missing a clear view of the policyholder’s biggest risk exposure: the home itself.


The Missed Opportunity: A More Connected Relationship


There is, however, a better path forward.


Insurers don’t have to be distant figures in the lives of policyholders. They can be trusted advisors, partners in risk prevention, not just responders to loss. And this shift isn’t about surveillance or oversight. It’s about service.


Helping a homeowner replace aging plumbing hoses, install functional smoke detectors, or clean a clogged dryer vent isn’t invasive. It’s empowering. It’s a way to reduce claims while building goodwill. And most importantly, it reflects the kind of alignment insurers have long sought: lowering risk while increasing satisfaction.


Homeowners want their homes to be safer, more resilient, and less stressful to manage. Helping them get there creates loyalty that’s difficult to replicate through pricing or policy design alone.


The Rafter Solution: Where Insight Meets Service


Rafter exists to help insurers activate this opportunity. We provide a preventive maintenance membership that makes homeownership easier for policyholders and risk more visible for carriers.


Through a combination of in-home services, intelligent digital tools, and expert support, Rafter enables:

  • A personalized home care plan that reflects the actual systems, layout, and condition of the home


  • Completion and validation of critical maintenance tasks to reduce the likelihood of common, high-cost claims


  • Real-time insight into home condition and risk factors, without being intrusive or overbearing


  • A better overall experience for the homeowner, regardless of whether they ever file a claim


For insurers, this translates into measurable value: lower loss ratios, higher retention, and a more modern, relationship-driven approach to policyholder engagement.

It’s not about collecting more data for the sake of it. It’s about building a bridge—between the insurer and the insured, between risk and service, between intention and action.


Let’s make insurance feel personal again. Let’s bring visibility and support into the places that matter most. Let’s help every homeowner take better care of the home they’ve worked so hard to own.


Rafter can help. Reach out to learn more.

From a Black Box to Real-Time Insights: Unlocking the Next Frontier in P&C Loss Prevention

July 21, 2025
The Hidden Cost of Household Risk Each year, the U.S. insurance industry pays out tens of billions of dollars in residential property claims. Fires caused by lint-clogged dryer vents. Water damage from aging hoses or unnoticed leaks. Structural issues from overgrown trees or failing sump pumps. These incidents are widespread, yet many of them are also preventable. Insurers have invested heavily in smarter pricing models, improved catastrophe modeling, and AI-powered analytics. These tools are powerful. But when it comes to what's actually happening inside the homes we insure, there’s still a major gap: We can’t see what’s happening until it becomes a claim. A Familiar Challenge: Insuring What You Can’t See For most carriers, each home in a portfolio is still something of a mystery. We may know the square footage, the year it was built, and how far it is from the coast. But we don’t know if the smoke detectors are working. We don't know if the dryer vent is at high risk for clogs and fires. We don’t know whether aging plumbing parts are quietly degrading behind the walls. These kinds of home maintenance blind spots are often the root cause of costly claims, but they remain invisible in the traditional insurance model. To move the industry forward, we don’t just need better data, we need more meaningful visibility into the real-time condition of the homes we insure, along with effective communication to the homeowner on how to prevent any safety hazards in their home. A New Layer of Insight: Bringing the Home into Focus To better manage loss, carriers need a view of the home that goes beyond one-time underwriting snapshots. That starts with two categories of insight that have historically been missing but are increasingly possible to surface: Home Condition Visibility: What’s Happening Right Now? This includes practical, safety-relevant signals that help answer key questions like: Are there visible safety risks like missing smoke detectors or aging water heaters that the homeowner needs to know about? Are the most common sources of claims (fire, water, freeze, intrusion) being proactively addressed? Are the correct preventative measures taken and the right support staff engaged to address issues? These are missed opportunities to not only reduce insurance claims, but also to improve safety in the home. With the right support, many homeowners would take these actions happily. But without guidance, they often go overlooked. Home Care Patterns: What Can We Learn About Behavior and Risk? Just as important is understanding the context: What’s the general condition and age of key systems like HVAC, plumbing, or the roof? Has the homeowner recently completed work or maintenance on the home? Are there signals that the homeowner is actively engaged in keeping the home safe and well cared for? Has the homeowner been able to find the correct service providers for tasks? None of this data needs to be invasive or overreaching. When structured and shared with care, it paints a fuller picture that benefits both insurer and insured. It enables smarter risk engagement, personalized service, and, ultimately, fewer claims. What We’re Seeing in the Field At Rafter, we’ve completed hundreds of in-home assessments, and the patterns are consistent:

The $47B Question: Why Does Preventable Loss Exist in Residential P&C?

July 21, 2025
The Cost We Keep Paying  Each year, the U.S. property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry pays out over $100 billion in residential claims. Fires, water damage, windstorms, and theft represent not only financial losses but deeply disruptive experiences for homeowners. What’s striking isn’t just the scale of the problem, it’s how much of it could be avoided.