Protective device credits for connected technology run from 1% to 25%, and the percentage is the least useful thing about them

If you are benchmarking smart home discounts for your next filing, start with the bad news: the number you are comparing yourself against does not exist.

Somewhere in the last few filing cycles, smart home technology stopped being a marketing talking point and became a rating variable. It now sits in protective device tables next to central station alarms and sprinkler systems, filed and priced like any other credit. What it does not have is a definition. There is no industry-standard test for "smart," so the structures underneath those credits look nothing alike. Some carriers never use the word. Some name a specific manufacturer. One of the largest homeowners writers built an entire tier around the concept.

So when someone in your pricing meeting says "the market gives about 10% for this," the honest follow-up is: which market, defined how, filed when? Answering that requires the filings, because none of it is visible from a quote page.

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The prevention case is settled. The pricing case is not.

Connected devices have earned their place in homeowners rating. A plug-in monitor that catches electrical faults before they arc, or a water sensor that shuts off the supply line when it sees a leak, attacks both frequency and severity on two of the most expensive perils, and generates loss data that sharpens risk assessment at renewal.

The friction is cost, and it lands on the policyholder. A few hundred dollars up front is a real barrier for a homeowner already shopping on price. Carriers have answered in two ways: premium credits, and partnerships that put the hardware in the home for free or close to it. Whisker Labs distributes Ting through more than 30 carrier partners including State Farm, Nationwide, and Chubb. Moen has worked with Liberty Mutual, Farmers, and AAA. State Farm went further and took a partial stake in ADT in 2022.

Those partnerships get the press releases. The credits get filed.

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Two discount architectures, very different implications

Read enough homeowners filings and the approaches sort into two buckets.

Technology-agnostic tiers. The discount attaches to what the device does and how it is monitored, not to whether it is connected. Liberty Mutual is a clean example, with fire protection credits varying by whether the system is unmonitored, self-monitored, or professionally monitored. A smart smoke detector earns a credit here because it satisfies a monitoring tier, not because it is smart. This approach ages well. It absorbs new hardware without a filing cycle.

Explicitly defined smart home credits. The carrier identifies qualifying connected technology and prices it directly, sometimes naming a partner's product line by brand. Farmers extends a credit specifically to Google Nest devices. This approach is more marketable and more precise, and it locks the carrier into a maintenance burden every time the hardware market moves.

The choice tells you something about the carrier behind it. One is a pricing organization absorbing connected devices into an existing framework. The other is a distribution organization committed to specific manufacturer relationships. Neither is wrong, and you cannot tell which bet a competitor made from their quote page.

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The number you are benchmarking against does not exist

Discounts identified from rate filings and public sources. Amounts vary by device type, policy form, state, and eligibility requirements. "X" indicates no applicable discount was identified in the sources reviewed.

* State Farm: up to 10% for qualifying burglary and fire alarms reporting to a central station.
** USAA: 10% protective device discount for qualifying smart home devices.
*** Farmers: applied once, regardless of how many qualifying devices are installed.

The spread is the story. Water credits run from 3% to 30% depending on the carrier. Security credits range from 1% to 25%, a twenty-five-fold difference on the same nominal feature. There is no market average here in any useful sense, and a two-carrier sample will land you almost anywhere you want to be.

And these percentages are not comparable units. A 10% credit that requires professional monitoring and a 10% credit earned by installing a $99 plug-in device describe different populations of risk. Farmers applies its credit once no matter how many qualifying devices are present. State Farm's version keys on central station reporting. Same headline number, different eligible book.

So the benchmark that matters is not the percentage. It is the eligibility language sitting above it in the rule pages.

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Travelers built a tier for it

Travelers is the outlier worth studying. Among the largest homeowners writers, it is effectively alone in using a broad smart home designation inside its base rate protective device tables.

The filed definition turns on notification rather than hardware category. Travelers distinguishes smart systems by their ability to alert the insured or a household member through email, text, or a mobile app, which separates them from self-monitored and centrally monitored categories. Under that definition a policyholder can earn credits across fire, water, and theft, and a full complement of connected devices lands in roughly the same neighborhood as a traditional central station setup.

The interesting part is what the filings do not say. Travelers has invested heavily in partnerships, including Ting and a now-concluded Amazon device bundle. None of that shows up as brand preference in the rating variables. The definition stays generic, so any qualifying device earns the credit and the marketing partnership does not constrain the pricing.

That is a deliberate design choice, and it is only legible if you read the filing.

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The takeaway for product and pricing teams

Your benchmark is probably stale. Protective device factors have been revised repeatedly as connected hardware matured. A comparison built two filing cycles ago will not reflect where the tiers sit now.

Definitions are the leverage point. Two carriers can both advertise a 10% smart home discount while qualifying entirely different populations of devices. The eligibility language, not the percentage, determines who actually gets it.

Partner naming is a signal. When a carrier names a manufacturer in a filing, that is a durable commitment showing up in a regulatory document. Tracking which carriers do that, and which keep their definitions open, tells you how the distribution side of this market is consolidating.

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How Insuraviews helps

Everything cited above came from public rate, rule, and form filings, including submissions from Allstate (GMMX-133849594, GMMX-132849232), American Family (AMFC-134007214), Chubb (ACEH-134438705), Travelers (TRVA-131121119), Nationwide (NWPP-133450473), Farmers (FAIG-133129432), Liberty Mutual (LBPM-132032625), and State Farm (SFMA-133877236).

Assembling that by hand means pulling filings state by state, reading rule pages for definitional language, and reconciling credits that are expressed differently in every submission. It is the kind of project that takes an analyst a few weeks and is out of date by the next quarter.

Insuraviews indexes P&C rate, rule, and form filings across all 50 states and DC. Ask the AI Assistant which carriers define smart home devices in their protective device tables, and it reads the rule pages and supporting exhibits, pulls the exact eligibility wording, and reconstructs multi-tier factor tables into something you can put side by side. The research assignment becomes a search.

If smart home credits are on your roadmap for the next filing, we can show you what the rest of the market has already filed. Log in and give it a try, and as always, let us know what you'd like to see next.

Not yet a customer? Schedule a demo of Insuraviews today to see what you're missing.

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