Every insurance claim you file goes on a shared industry record for five to seven years. So does every claim filed on the house you own. And in 2026, filing one more can matter in a way it did not five years ago, because company-initiated non-renewals are running two to three times the 2018 rate across the country.
CLUE stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange. It is a private shared database run by LexisNexis Risk Solutions that nearly every US property and auto insurer contributes to and reads from. When you request a homeowners quote, the insurer pulls a CLUE report on you and on the address; when you file a claim, the claim gets written back to CLUE for other insurers to see later.
It exists because insurers want to price you (and your house) using a longer history than a single agent's underwriting notes. It is regulated as a "specialty consumer reporting agency" under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, which is why you have a right to see your own file for free.
Each claim entry on a CLUE report typically includes:
Two things it does not include: quotes you shopped and did not buy, and claims you asked about but did not file. That distinction is why the "asking is not filing" rule matters so much: an unfiled inquiry does not touch the shared record.
Retention varies slightly by insurer and state, but the working assumption is five to seven years. That means a hail claim you file today is on the record through roughly 2033. During that window, every insurer you shop with can see it and price accordingly.
Once a claim ages off, it is gone. Insurers do not use CLUE for claims older than the retention window. This is why claim frequency in the recent past matters more than claim frequency lifetime.
Most homeowners carriers treat three claims within a five-year window as the point where a policy becomes uneconomic to write. The threshold is not a hard rule and it varies by carrier, region, and claim type, but it is close enough to industry norm that it works as a personal rule of thumb: if filing this claim would put your CLUE record at three in five, expect a rate increase, non-renewal, or both.
Two adjustments to keep in mind. Weather-related claims are usually weighted less heavily than liability or theft claims, and in several states insurers are prohibited by statute from counting weather claims against you for surcharge purposes. And a single small claim can trigger the same underwriting attention as a large one, because CLUE reports the fact of the claim, not just the dollar amount.
Because CLUE follows the address, the claims filed by previous owners of your home are on your home's CLUE report. Two situations where this matters:
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. §1681j), you are entitled to one free copy of your CLUE report every twelve months from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the operator of CLUE. There is no third party you need to go through and no fee to pay.
The official site is consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com. Ignore any third party that claims to sell you a CLUE report; they are reselling something the operator gives you for free.
Look for "Request Your Personal Consumer Reports" or a similarly named button. The auto and homeowners CLUE reports come bundled together in one personal disclosure request.
LexisNexis will ask a few knowledge-based questions to confirm you are who you say you are. Expect questions drawn from public records (prior addresses, vehicles, etc.). This is normal and it exists to keep other people from pulling your report.
You will get an on-screen copy and typically an emailed PDF within a few minutes to a few days. Read it end to end. If any entry looks wrong, you have a right under FCRA to dispute it directly with LexisNexis and, if the insurer confirms an error, have it corrected or removed.
The C.L.U.E. Home Seller Disclosure Report covers claims history on the address itself. Same intake, same fee (none), and it produces a document you can hand a buyer that says "here is what has been filed on this house."
The reason a CLUE explainer matters more in 2026 than it did in 2020 is that carriers are exiting more homes than they used to. The pattern is national, not one state's problem, and it is well documented in primary data now.
+96–216%
Non-renewal rise, 2018–2024
Company-initiated homeowners non-renewals rose between 96 and 216 percent across all four US Census regions from 2018 through 2024, per NAIC market conduct data compiled in the US Senate Budget Committee's climate-insurance analysis.
~80%
ZIP-level non-renewal gap
The highest-risk ZIPs face non-renewal rates roughly 80 percent higher than the lowest, per the US Treasury Federal Insurance Office's ZIP-level analysis of homeowners markets.
5–7 yrs
CLUE retention window
The visibility window on any claim you file. Any new insurer you shop with over that period sees it.
What this means, practically, when you are looking at a hail-damaged roof or a small water leak: the cost of filing is not only the surcharge and the lost claims-free discount you have always had to think about. It now includes a materially higher probability that, at some renewal in the next five years, your carrier declines to write you. And once you have been non-renewed for claim frequency, finding replacement coverage in a high-risk ZIP is harder and more expensive than most homeowners realize.
Educational information, not legal or insurance advice. CLUE retention windows, dispute procedures, and non-renewal rates vary by insurer, state, and year; consult the primary sources above and your own policy documents for authoritative answers.