Note that I deleted my comment because it pertained more to health insurance than property protection. Should have read the article FIRST instead of commenting and then reading.

Kind of like Ready, Fire, Aim. Sorry!

I'd never really considered it, but this is just a group form of self insurance. This could really save a lot of money!

I know people in local churches who have done exactly that for health insurance with some success.

Would be interesting to consider a coop for insurance, where the proceeds are owned by the participants.

The only real value is certainty that comes from spreading the risk.

Having had past experience being treated as a criminal by the insurance company I hired to protect my goods (State Farm) I don't find this story shocking at all. The only two claims that I filed in 25 years -one for an auto accident and one for a home burglary- each took more than a year to settle even though I had provided extensive written independent valuation documentation requested by the companies. (Might this have been a result of my using a lawyer to force valid payment of a denied claim when I was a student in college 20 years earlier?)

In fact, I am amazed that people continue to give their hard earned money to giant companies that have produced NOTHING in the history of the industry. Without cozy relationships with government agencies making many types of insurance mandatory under law the insurance "industry" would be deservedly destroyed.

Insurance for most people today is a mandatory purchase serving only to avoid "imperial entanglements" arranged by the insurance "industry" to "insure" profits for themselves and enforced by the government "public servants" that do the bidding of the looting insurance "industry."