Home warranty companies are not required to publish claim payment rates, denial rates, or average claim amounts. This opacity is a significant consumer protection gap. Here’s what we can piece together from available sources.
Frontdoor Inc. (AHS/HSA) SEC filings: As a publicly traded company, Frontdoor publishes financial data that includes claims costs as a percentage of revenue. This gives indirect insight into their claim payment volume, though not denial rates.
Frontdoor typically reports service costs at 50-60% of revenue — meaning for every dollar of premium collected, roughly 50-60 cents goes to service costs (claims payments and related expenses). This is a reasonable ratio that suggests they’re paying substantial claims volume.
CFPB complaint database: Searchable by company and complaint type. Provides signal on denial patterns but isn’t a clean sample — only consumers who bother to complain show up.
BBB complaint data: Similar to CFPB — complaint-driven, not population-representative, but useful for pattern identification.
State regulatory filings: Some states require financial filings from home warranty companies. Where these exist and are public, they provide more direct data on claims paid vs. premiums collected.
Consumer review platforms: Trustpilot, Consumer Affairs, and similar platforms aggregate real consumer reviews. Not statistically clean, but large sample sizes on major companies provide directional signals.
The absence of mandatory claims reporting is itself informative. In insurance, claims payment data is required by state regulators as part of solvency and market conduct oversight. Home warranties escape most of this reporting because they’re regulated as service contracts, not insurance.
Companies that pay claims well would have an incentive to publicize that data. The industry’s general reluctance to publish denial rates suggests the numbers aren’t flattering.
Companies with better claim indicators:
Companies with worse claim indicators:
No consumer can know a home warranty company’s true claim denial rate before buying. The best available proxies are:
A company that excels on all five proxies is more likely to pay legitimate claims than one that fails on three of them.
Consumer advocates and some state regulators have pushed for mandatory claims reporting requirements — similar to what insurance companies file. Requirements would include:
This data would allow the kind of evidence-based company comparison that consumers currently can’t do. Until mandatory reporting exists, the proxies above are the best available tools.