My agent claims the increase is due to lawyers going after people for car accidents mostly, as well as an increasing number of uninsured motorists. I have Allstate. We are grandfathered into a 2M policy, but my agent says they no longer offer anything above 1M. I'm getting the feeling Allstate is struggling...insurance has been going up dramatically across the board for the last couple of years, but this is the first time something has doubled in one cycle.
You should talk to an independent agent and see if you can get a better deal. I would bet money you can, especially if all your exposure is in CT.
This is the core problem with companies with captive agents (Allstate, State Farm, Farmers, American Family). Your agent works for Allstate, they have no other carriers they work with to really understand the insurance market, and they pass along the company line blaming plaintiffs' attorneys without another thought.
Now, granted, you'll find a LOT of people who work in insurance who will complain about the plaintiff's bar. If you'll allow me to get up on my soapbox a minute, I think this is entirely misplaced in the U.S. market. It is true that greater attorney representation rates on claims (and the legal financing mechanisms that are behind some of that) raises insurance company costs, and that gets passed along to customers in the form of higher rates. But internally in the industry, there's all this whining about why attorneys "shouldn't" be involved in claims, and as my therapist says, "should" shows an assumption. And this isn't new; my favorite example is that the 1999 film Big Daddy has as a central plot point that Adam Sandler's character got a big insurance payout and didn't have to work anymore.
The entire role of insurance is to aggregate risk and redistribute it across a large pool to manage costs. We all* pay a small amount for fire coverage knowing that if our house is the one that burns down, insurance will pay to rebuild, and the insurance company takes its cut in profits. The more risk, the more potential insurance profit, as long as the impacted carrier is managing to the actual risk instead of what they think it "should" be.
I also get super annoyed by industry people who advocate for lowering liability limits. As I've mentioned before in this thread, there aren't actually that many limits losses and defense expenses (i.e. fighting all those mean plaintiffs' attorneys) are OUTSIDE of the limits. In the absolute best case, by writing a $1M umbrella limit instead of a $2M limit, you reduce your potential payout from $2.5M (primary & umbrella) plus at least 500k defense to $1.5M plus at least 500k. But that best case is extremely rare, so more likely you've given up $200 in premium on 10,000 policies to save $1M.
Interesting, because there's a personal injury lawyer on YouTube who says Allstate is one of the worst for paying claims, so they have to be sued. Maybe it's a vicious cycle? Refuse to pay claims, get sued, have to pay out a higher amount, then have to raise rates, etc.
I can't speak for Allstate, but for my company, the increase in claims where an attorney is representing the claimant is both an increase in the number of claims that get an attorney involved at some point during the life of the claim, and an increase "at first rep", meaning claims that get started with an attorney to begin with. It would be odd if insurance company behavior was the real driver for liability losses, since the claimants are not the policyholders, but I can see that happening with property claims (it's huge in Florida, for example).
*Except for those people with a substantial stache and admirable risk tolerance who choose to self-insure.
