Memphis Renters, Homeowners & Auto Insurance
Independent insurance advisors serving Memphis families since 1992.
Memphis is the largest city in Tennessee and the economic center of the Mid-South, home to roughly 610,000 residents inside the city limits and nearly 920,000 across Shelby County. The insurance landscape here carries risk factors that simply do not exist in most American cities. Properties across Midtown, East Memphis, Whitehaven, Frayser, and the neighborhoods closest to the Mississippi River face elevated flood exposure that standard homeowners policies exclude entirely — not a partial reduction, but zero coverage. The New Madrid Seismic Zone, one of the most seismically active fault systems in the continental United States, runs directly beneath the Memphis metro area. Standard homeowners and renters policies exclude earthquake damage entirely. A home that survives a major seismic event without separate earthquake coverage faces complete uninsured loss.
Thompson Insurance Agency has served Memphis families and property owners since 1992. As an independent agency, we are not tied to any single carrier. We compare coverage and pricing across more than ten insurance companies to find the policy that fits your specific address, your specific risk profile, and your specific budget. That independence matters more in Memphis than almost anywhere else in our service area, because the combination of flood risk, earthquake exposure, and a wide range of neighborhood-level property values creates coverage situations that a single-carrier captive agent cannot adequately address.
What We Cover in Memphis.
Home
Protecting your most valuable asset with comprehensive coverage — dwelling, personal property, liability, and loss of use — matched to what your home is truly worth replacing.
Auto
Personal auto coverage tailored to your vehicles, your driving habits, and the carriers who reward your profile — not a one-size-fits-all rate.
Umbrella
An extra layer of liability protection above your home and auto policies — because one judgment can change everything, and the right amount of coverage is always more than the minimum.
Flood
Standard homeowners policies don't cover flood damage — not a single dollar. We help you secure private flood coverage before the rainy season, not after it's too late.
Earthquake
The New Madrid Seismic Zone is one of the most active fault systems in North America. Standard homeowners policies exclude earthquake damage entirely — a separate policy closes that gap.
Specialty Vehicles
RVs, motorcycles, boats and watercraft — each needs a policy of its own, because none of them are covered by the auto policy on your car.
Renters
Your landlord's policy covers the building — not your belongings. Renters insurance protects your personal property, covers liability, and costs less than a streaming subscription.
Landlord
Own rental property? We provide landlord policies designed for owners who lease — covering structure, lost rental income, and liability when tenants are involved.
Jewelry
Scheduled coverage for jewelry, fine art, watches, and valuables that exceed standard homeowners limits — full replacement value with no deductible on most items.
Memphis Property Insurance — What the Risk Profile Demands
Shelby County's geography creates a layered risk environment that requires a layered coverage strategy. The Wolf River, Nonconnah Creek, and the tributaries feeding the Mississippi River system put entire zip codes at measurable flood risk that FEMA flood maps do not always reflect accurately. Properties in the 38106, 38107, 38108, and 38109 zip codes carry flood histories that should be reviewed before any homeowners policy is written. Even properties well outside designated flood zones have experienced water damage from drainage failures and rising creek levels during heavy rainfall events.
Earthquake coverage in Memphis is not a niche product — it is a foundational coverage gap for most homeowners and renters in the metro area. The New Madrid fault system last produced a catastrophic sequence of earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, events strong enough to cause the Mississippi River to flow backward temporarily. Seismologists consider a major event on this fault system one of the highest-probability large-scale natural disaster risks in the United States. The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance recommends earthquake coverage as a serious consideration for all property owners in the region. A standard HO-3 homeowners policy will not pay a single dollar of earthquake-related structural damage.
Auto insurance in Memphis carries its own set of considerations. Shelby County consistently ranks among Tennessee's highest counties for uninsured and underinsured motorists. The Tennessee minimum liability limits — $25,000 per person and $50,000 per occurrence — are insufficient to cover serious injury claims in most real-world accidents. We recommend uninsured motorist coverage and umbrella liability coverage for Memphis drivers as standard practice, not optional add-ons.
Why Memphis Families Choose an Independent Agency
A captive agent — one who works exclusively for a single insurance company — can only offer you that company's products at that company's rates. If your home has older wiring, a flat roof, or sits in a flood-adjacent zone, a captive agent may simply decline to write your policy or offer you inadequate coverage at maximum rates. An independent agency has options.
Thompson Insurance Agency represents more than ten carriers active in the Memphis and Shelby County market. When one carrier's underwriters flag a property characteristic that raises the rate, we have the ability to move to another carrier whose guidelines treat that same characteristic differently. That flexibility is what separates an independent agency from a single-brand office, and it is the reason Memphis property owners with complex situations — rental portfolios, older homes in historic neighborhoods, properties with prior claims history, high-value jewelry or art collections — consistently receive better outcomes working with us.
We also work as advisors, not order-takers. When we review your existing coverage, we are looking for gaps — the flood rider you were never offered, the earthquake endorsement your previous agent skipped, the umbrella policy that would have covered the liability judgment your current limits would not. That review process costs nothing and frequently reveals coverage situations that leave families financially exposed in the event of a loss.
Coverage Built for the Memphis Market
Every coverage type we offer is available with Memphis-specific context applied to the recommendation. Homeowners insurance in East Memphis differs from homeowners insurance in Cordova, which differs from coverage in South Memphis. Replacement cost values, roof age considerations, proximity to fire stations, neighborhood crime patterns, and FEMA flood zone designations all factor into how we structure a policy and which carrier we recommend.
Private flood insurance is available to Memphis properties regardless of FEMA flood zone designation. Properties in low-to-moderate risk zones are eligible at preferred rates that most homeowners never look into because their lender did not require it — and then discover they needed when a drainage event floods their finished basement. We recommend flood insurance conversations for any Memphis property owner regardless of flood zone status.
Renters in Memphis represent a significant and frequently underinsured segment of the population. Shelby County's rental market includes a large number of households whose belongings — furniture, electronics, clothing, and personal property — are entirely unprotected by their landlord's insurance policy. Renters insurance covering personal property, personal liability, and additional living expenses is available for most Memphis addresses at a cost well under $200 per year.
Memphis Insurance — What an Independent Agency Does Differently
Memphis property owners face a specific combination of risks that captive agents — those working for a single carrier — cannot address with a single company's product lineup. The flood exposure varies by zip code in ways that require individual property-level review. The earthquake exposure is uniform across the metro but excluded from every standard homeowners policy sold in the market. The uninsured motorist rate on Memphis streets is among the highest in Tennessee. These are not edge cases — they are baseline facts about insuring property and vehicles in this city.
An independent agency's value in Memphis is that no single carrier is best for every property profile. A carrier that prices flood-adjacent properties favorably may be uncompetitive on a mid-city older home. A carrier that writes aggressively on standard Memphis auto profiles may impose unfavorable guidelines on rental properties with prior claims. Thompson Insurance Agency reviews your specific address, specific risk profile, and specific coverage needs against the guidelines and pricing of more than ten carriers before making a recommendation — not one company's standard offering applied uniformly to every client who walks in.
Memphis landlords represent a significant portion of our client base. Shelby County's rental market is large, and the coverage gap between a standard homeowners policy and a landlord policy is one of the most consequential mistakes property owners make in this market. A standard HO-3 homeowners policy is not designed for tenant-occupied properties and can be voided by a carrier if occupancy changes. A proper landlord policy covers structure, lost rental income during a covered repair period, and liability exposure that a homeowners policy does not extend to non-owner-occupied properties. We write landlord policies for single-family rentals, small multi-family properties, and mixed portfolios across every Memphis zip code.
Memphis Coverage — Frequently Requested Lines
We write the following coverage types for Memphis residents on a regular basis: homeowners insurance, renters insurance, auto insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance, umbrella liability, landlord insurance, and scheduled personal property coverage for jewelry, fine art, and high-value collections.
Renters Insurance in Memphis — The Policy Most Tenants Skip
A Memphis lease will usually require renters insurance, and most tenants buy whatever satisfies the leasing office and never look at it again. That is a shame, because the policy does three separate jobs, and the one the lease cares about is not the one that matters most to the tenant.
The first job is your belongings. A renters policy covers what you own — furniture, clothes, electronics, the bike in the hallway — against fire, theft, storm, and water damage from a burst pipe. It covers them inside the apartment and outside it: a laptop taken from a car in Cooper-Young is a claim on your renters policy, not on anything your landlord holds. Ask whether it settles at replacement cost or actual cash value, because a ten-year-old sofa is worth very little on a depreciation schedule and rather more when you have to buy another one.
The second job is liability, and it is the reason the lease insists. If a guest is hurt in your unit, or a fire that started at your stove damages the three apartments around you, that claim lands on you personally. The landlord's policy covers the building and does nothing for what you owe. This is the part that stops a bad evening becoming a judgment that follows you for years, and the limit is usually straightforward to raise.
The third job is loss of use, which tenants tend to discover too late. If a covered loss makes the unit uninhabitable, this pays for somewhere else to live while it is repaired — a hotel, a short lease, the gap between your rent and whatever you have to pay in the meantime. In a city where one building fire can displace a dozen households at once, it is worth knowing whether you have it and for how long.
We write renters policies across Memphis — Midtown, East Memphis, Downtown and the neighborhoods between them — and we will say plainly when the coverage your leasing office will accept is thinner than the coverage you actually want. More on what renters insurance covers in Memphis
Flood Risk in Memphis
Memphis drains toward the Mississippi through the Wolf River and Nonconnah Creek, and the Army Corps of Engineers is studying the Nonconnah basin for flood control alongside two DeSoto County basins. When the Mississippi runs high, those tributaries lose the fall they need to drain, and water stands inland.
Memphis does not have to guess at its flood history, because every NFIP claim ever filed here is in the federal record. It holds 684 of them for the city's ZIP codes since 1978 — a claim in 46 of those 48 years. Nearly half, 318, were rated in a moderate-to-low-risk zone rather than a high-risk one. (FEMA's OpenFEMA NFIP claims record, loss dates 1978 through 2025.)
The practical point for a Memphis homeowner is that flood zone and flood risk are different questions. FEMA reports 29% of NFIP claims from 2014 to 2024 came from outside high-risk areas. We check the mapped zone, then price private flood cover on the property so you can see what it actually costs.
Nearby Communities We Serve
Millington · Germantown · Collierville · Bartlett · Cordova