The CLUE Report: Your Insurance Claims File

CLUE stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange. It is a database of insurance claims history that insurers contribute to and consult when quoting and renewing policies.

It is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which means you have rights over it — including the right to see it and to dispute what is wrong.

What it contains

Typically for each claim: the date, the type of loss, the amount paid, the status, the insurer, and the policy or property involved. Claims history is generally retained for a period of several years.

Two versions matter. A personal auto report follows you as an individual. A personal property report follows the address, which is why it matters when buying a house.

What frequently appears that should not

• Inquiries recorded as claims. Calling to ask whether something would be covered, without filing, is sometimes logged in a way that looks like a claim.
• Claims closed with no payment, which still appear and can still affect pricing.
• Claims at a wrong address or attributed to the wrong person.
• Duplicates of the same event.
• Amounts that do not match what was actually paid.

How to get yours

The report is maintained by LexisNexis. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act you are entitled to a free copy annually, and to another free copy after any adverse action based on it.

Request it directly from the reporting agency rather than through a third-party service. There is no reason to pay.

Disputing an entry

1. Get the report and read every entry against your own recollection.
2. Identify what is wrong and gather what proves it — correspondence, claim numbers, closure letters.
3. File a dispute with the reporting agency in writing. They are required to investigate.
4. Contact the insurer that furnished the entry as well. The furnisher is who corrects the source data.
5. Get the corrected report once resolved, and keep it.
6. Ask for a re-quote if the error affected your pricing.

Why an inquiry can matter

This is the part worth knowing before you pick up the phone. In some cases, asking an insurer whether a loss would be covered can be recorded, and the record can be read later as claims activity.

If you want to understand your coverage without creating a record, reading your policy or asking a general question that does not reference a specific incident are alternatives. Once a specific loss is reported, the record generally exists whether or not a payment follows.

What it is not

It is not a credit report and it is not a credit-based insurance score. Those are separate, drawn from different data, and governed by their own rules — though all three are consumer reports with FCRA rights attached.

What we are not saying

We are not telling you to avoid filing claims. Insurance exists to be used, and a legitimate claim is what you paid for.

What we are saying is that a file about your claims history exists, that you are entitled to see it free, that errors in it are common enough to be worth checking, and that on a property purchase it tells you something the seller may not.