Dropped After a Home Insurance Claim: The File Behind It, and Your Rights to Fix It

Updated August 14, 2026. Quick answer: when a homeowners insurer prices you or declines to renew you on your claims history, it is reading a consumer report, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act treats the company that keeps it exactly like a credit bureau. That gives you four things most people never use: one free copy of the file every 12 months, a second free copy within 60 days of an adverse-action notice, a 30-day dispute the company must run free of charge, and a rule that anything it cannot verify must come out rather than be marked disputed. The file behind homeowners underwriting is usually LexisNexis C.L.U.E.® Property, whose own product page says it draws on more than 90% of insurers writing homeowners coverage. Below: what is in it, how to get it, and how to fight an entry.

There is a file, and the FCRA has a name for the company that keeps it

The statute defines a category most people have never heard of, the nationwide specialty consumer reporting agency. The term The term “nationwide specialty consumer reporting agency” means a consumer reporting agency that compiles and maintains files on consumers on a nationwide basis relating to- (1) medical records or payments; (2) residential or tenant history; (3) check writing history; (4) employment history; or (5) insurance claims. — 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(x).

For homeowners insurance the file in question is generally C.L.U.E. Property, run by LexisNexis Risk Solutions. That is not our characterisation. The vendor’s own product page says: “LexisNexis C.L.U.E. Property service is a consumer reporting agency product provided by LexisNexis Risk Solutions Inc. and may only be accessed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act” (LexisNexis Risk Solutions, C.L.U.E.® Property product page). The same page states its reach — “Access reports based on claims data provided by more than 90% of insurers that write homeowners coverage.” — and what a report carries: “Property loss history reports provide granular information on date of loss, cause of loss, amounts paid and much more.” The CFPB’s own published list of consumer reporting companies routes consumers to that product page (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, list of consumer reporting companies (PDF)).

Being a consumer reporting agency is the whole point. It is what converts the file from something an industry keeps about you into something you have enforceable rights over.

Getting the file costs nothing, twice over

Two separate free-copy rights exist and they stack.

• Once every 12 months, always. A specialty agency shall make all disclosures pursuant to section 1681g of this title once during any 12-month period upon request of the consumer and without charge to the consumer (15 U.S.C. § 1681j(a)(1)(A)). No trigger required.
• Again within 60 days of an adverse-action notice. The same file disclosures must be made without charge to the consumer if, not later than 60 days after receipt by such consumer of a notification pursuant to section 1681m of this title (15 U.S.C. § 1681j(b)). So a non-renewal letter buys you a second look at the file that produced it, and the 60 days run from your receipt of the notice.

Congress also required a way in. The regulator was directed to require the establishment of a streamlined process for consumers to request consumer reports under subparagraph (A), which shall include, at a minimum, the establishment by each such agency of a toll-free telephone number for such requests (15 U.S.C. § 1681j(a)(1)(C)(i)). What you are entitled to see is All information in the consumer’s file at the time of the request (15 U.S.C. § 1681g(a)(1)) — the file, not a summary of it.

What the letter that dropped you is required to tell you

Adverse action is defined broadly in insurance. It reaches a denial or cancellation of, an increase in any charge for, or a reduction or other adverse or unfavorable change in the terms of coverage or amount of, any insurance, existing or applied for, in connection with the underwriting of insurance — 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(k)(1)(B)(i). A price increase counts. A reduction in what the policy covers counts.

When the decision rests even partly on a consumer report, the insurer taking the action must hand you two specific things, and both are useful.

• the name, address, and telephone number of the consumer reporting agency (including a toll-free telephone number established by the agency if the agency compiles and maintains files on consumers on a nationwide basis) that furnished the report to the person — 15 U.S.C. § 1681m(a)(3)(A).
• a statement that the consumer reporting agency did not make the decision to take the adverse action and is unable to provide the consumer the specific reasons why the adverse action was taken — 15 U.S.C. § 1681m(a)(3)(B).

That second requirement is the one to hold on to. The reporting company is not allowed to tell you why the insurer decided what it decided, and the insurer has to say so. If you want to change the outcome, the thing to attack is the accuracy of the entry, not the reasoning of the underwriter.

Disputing an entry: 30 days, a 15-day trap, and what “cannot be verified” means

The dispute right is the operative one, it costs nothing, and the statute puts the work on the agency rather than on you. Once you notify it of a dispute, the agency shall, free of charge, conduct a reasonable reinvestigation to determine whether the disputed information is inaccurate and record the current status of the disputed information, or delete the item from the file in accordance with paragraph (5), before the end of the 30-day period — 15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(1)(A).

The trap is in the next subparagraph. That 30-day period may be extended for not more than 15 additional days if the consumer reporting agency receives information from the consumer during that 30-day period that is relevant to the reinvestigation (15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(1)(B)). Sending a second batch of documents a fortnight in is the most common way people accidentally give the agency another two weeks. Send everything you have with the original dispute.

The outcome rule is stronger than most people expect. If, after any reinvestigation under paragraph (1) of any information disputed by a consumer, an item of the information is found to be inaccurate or incomplete or cannot be verified, the consumer reporting agency shall- (i) promptly delete that item of information from the file of the consumer, or modify that item of information, as appropriate, based on the results of the reinvestigation — 15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(5)(A). Unverifiable does not mean flagged. It means gone.

If the reinvestigation goes against you, the consumer may file a brief statement setting forth the nature of the dispute. The consumer reporting agency may limit such statements to not more than one hundred words (15 U.S.C. § 1681i(b)).

The insurer that reported the claim has its own duty

A dispute does not only bind the reporting company. Once the agency notifies the business that supplied the information, that business must conduct an investigation with respect to the disputed information (15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b)(1)), review what the agency sent, report its results back, and, where the item proves inaccurate or unverifiable, modify it, delete it, or permanently block it from being reported.

Practically: disputing through the reporting company reaches your insurer anyway, and it starts a duty the insurer owes under federal law rather than as a courtesy.

Seven years is a ceiling, and the exception is about life insurance

The FCRA caps how long adverse information may be reported at all: “Any other adverse item of information, other than records of convictions of crimes which antedates the report by more than seven years.” (15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(5)).

There is an exemption list, and it is routinely misread as the time limits do not apply to insurance. Read it. The insurance entry on that list is the underwriting of life insurance involving, or which may reasonably be expected to involve, a face amount of $150,000 or more (15 U.S.C. § 1681c(b)(2)). Life insurance, above a face amount, is the carve-out. A homeowners policy is not on the list, so the seven-year ceiling applies to the report that priced it.

What we cannot tell you is how long the company actually keeps a claim short of that ceiling. See the gaps section — the widely republished retention figure is not stated anywhere we could read it.

What the file will not show you

One sentence sets the boundary of the disclosure right, and it is easy to miss: nothing in this paragraph shall be construed to require a consumer reporting agency to disclose to a consumer any information concerning credit scores or any other risk scores or predictors relating to the consumer — 15 U.S.C. § 1681g(a)(1)(B).

So you can see the claims. You cannot see the insurance score built from them, and asking for it is not a right the statute gives you. Fix the inputs; the score is downstream.

A citation trap worth knowing if you go reading the statute

The free-report section still points at the wrong subsection letter. Section 1681j sends you to section 1681a(w) for the definition of a specialty agency, and the definition is not there any more. The Code’s own References in Text note records that 1681a(w) “was redesignated section 1681a(x) of this title by” Dodd-Frank (15 U.S.C. § 1681j, References in Text note (uscode.house.gov)).

Anything published before 2010, and a surprising amount published since, cites (w). The live definition is at 15 U.S.C. § 1681a(x). The right is unaffected; only the pointer moved.

What we could not establish, and are not going to invent

• How long C.L.U.E. keeps a claim. The seven-year figure everyone republishes is not stated on the C.L.U.E. Property product page, on the LexisNexis consumer disclosure request page, or on any LexisNexis consumer page we could reach. What is law is the seven-year reporting ceiling above. We are not restating a number whose source we could not find.
• Whether a previous owner’s claim follows the address. Commonly asserted, nowhere primary-sourced that we could read. The vendor describes matching search criteria against property claims, which does not settle whether the file is keyed to the person or the house.
• Whether asking for a quote lands in the file. Same answer: no primary source read this session says either way.
• Your state’s non-renewal rules. How much notice an insurer owes you, whether it must state a reason, and what a defective notice gets you are state insurance code, not federal. That table does not exist yet and this page does not guess at it.

Sources

Related: if the policy that replaced yours was bought by your mortgage servicer rather than by you, that is force-placed insurance, which has its own federal rulebook. What a standard policy covers in the first place is HO-3 vs HO-5.

General consumer information, not financial, tax or legal advice. Federal statutes and regulations are as published by the cited source on 2026-08-14 and change without notice; your own circumstances and your state’s insurance code govern.