PURE and Openly end up on the same shortlist more often than you would expect, usually because a household’s reconstruction estimate has climbed past the point where an ordinary policy fits. They are not two versions of the same thing. One asks you to join a member owned exchange, sign a power of attorney and contribute capital. The other sells a policy on a published rulebook with a hard cap and a state list you can read.
This page sets out what each publishes, with dates. It does not name a winner. The answer depends on the house, the state, and whether membership economics are something you want.
PURE is a carrier. Openly is not.
PURE. PURE Insurance is the marketing name for Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange, a Florida domiciled reciprocal insurer. PURE defines a reciprocal exchange in its own glossary as “an unincorporated association in which members (as individuals, partnerships, trustees, or corporations) exchange contracts and pay premiums through an attorney-in-fact for the insurance of each other.” The attorney-in-fact is PURE Risk Management, LLC, which PURE describes as a for-profit entity serving as its attorney-in-fact for a fee, and which is a subsidiary of Privilege Underwriters, Inc., a member of the Tokio Marine Group of Companies. Tokio Marine completed the acquisition in February 2020.
Openly. Openly LLC states in its own disclosure that it “is a general agency and program administrator offering homeowners insurance policies underwritten by unaffiliated insurers through its network of independent agency partners. Each insurer is solely responsible for the claims on its policies and pays Openly for policies sold.” Openly is domiciled in Delaware with its principal place of business in Boston, founded in 2017 by Ty Harris and Matt Wielbut.
Two admitted carriers hold Openly’s paper: Rock Ridge Insurance Company, NAIC 11089, part of Clear Blue Insurance Group, and MS Transverse Insurance Company, NAIC 21075, part of MS and AD Insurance Group. MS Transverse writes in six states, all also Rock Ridge states.
Membership, and what it actually costs
Three things happen with PURE that do not happen with a program administrator product.
You sign a legal instrument. PURE states that membership requires an executed Subscriber’s Agreement and Power of Attorney.
You contribute capital. PURE states that members “are required to contribute surplus (capital), in addition to paying premiums, for their first five years of membership,” calculated as a small percentage of premium. That is a cost of entry, separate from premium and from the savings account.
You get a Subscriber Savings Account, which PURE defines as “a notional account held for each active PURE member, reflecting their individual share of PURE’s policyholder surplus.” PURE’s own conditions:
- Allocations “are made at the discretion of management, based on the performance of the business and require regulatory approval,” specifically by the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation.
- The accounts “remain on PURE’s balance sheet, available to pay claims if necessary. Because of this, SSA balances could decrease.”
- Funds are not accessible on demand and balances do not earn interest.
- PURE states it “has made an allocation in 11 of our past 20 years in business.”
Openly has none of this, and that is rather the point of it. No membership, no power of attorney, no surplus contribution, nothing to allocate. Openly states an agent can generate a quote in as little as 15 seconds from name, date of birth and address.
A reciprocal genuinely does return surplus to members in a way a program administrator cannot. But the honest way to weigh PURE is coverage, service and price first, with a savings account credit treated as upside that may or may not arrive. Anyone presenting it as a guaranteed return has not read PURE’s own page.
Three PURE entities, and the sentence that undoes the pitch
PURE is not one company. It is three, and only one carries membership.
PURE, legally Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange, the Florida domiciled admitted reciprocal. This is the entity with membership and a Subscriber Savings Account.
PURE Specialty Exchange, an Arizona domiciled domestic surplus lines reciprocal introduced in March 2022, with its own attorney-in-fact. PURE describes its high value homeowners product as designed for coastal and wildfire exposed areas, short-term rentals and other challenging risk profiles requiring up to $50M in coverage. As surplus lines it requires verified diligent effort.
PURE Programs, LLC, a managing general underwriter introduced in January 2017, arranging the non-admitted business: coastal and wildfire exposed homes, homes rented to others, homes under construction, non-standard homeowners and excess liability, and flood.
Now the sentence. PURE Programs states in its own footer that “policies arranged by PURE Programs may not confer the benefits of being a reciprocal exchange member including Subscriber or Member Savings Accounts.” If membership economics are why you are considering PURE, and your quote comes through PURE Programs, the reason may not be present in the policy you are offered. Ask which entity is issuing.
Surplus lines paper is also not backed by a state guaranty fund and is not subject to the same form and rate filing rules as admitted paper. Openly’s two carriers are both admitted, which is a genuine structural difference here.
Settlement terms, where one side publishes and the other does not
This is the section where most comparison articles quietly invent something.
Openly publishes its terms. Guaranteed replacement cost, its own words, capped at $5 million: “Guaranteed replacement coverage up to $5M*”. The consumer explanation is that your home will be rebuilt even if the cost exceeds your initial policy limits.
The asterisk is Openly’s and it is material: “In CT, GA, KS, MS, MO, NH, OH, SC, TN and WI, coverage amount is subject to Coverage A and conditions listed in the policy.” In those ten states the guarantee is not open ended, and you should compare it against a competitor’s extended replacement cost endorsement rather than treating it as uncapped. Oregon is not on that list.
Openly’s other published limits: liability up to $1 million; blanket personal property up to $100,000 per category on a replacement cost basis; mold remediation up to $10,000 and mold liability up to $50,000; concealed water seepage up to $20,000; refrigerated property up to $5,000; tree removal up to $5,000 per occurrence. Optional coverages include home-sharing, equipment breakdown, water backup, buried service lines and personal cyber. Openly writes an HO-5 for primary and secondary homes and a modified HO-3 for homes rented to others, and insures up to nine rental properties, each on its own policy.
It also publishes a hard ceiling. For new business in Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin, total insured value is capped at $6M, defined as the replacement cost estimate, or dwelling in stated value states, plus other structures, personal property and loss of use.
PURE is a gap, and we are naming it rather than filling it. Our primary PURE material does not contain PURE’s own wording for its dwelling settlement basis, its liability limits or its personal property terms, and we will not characterise those from general knowledge or a comparison site. Ask for the policy form and read the dwelling settlement provision on each quote. See extended versus guaranteed replacement cost and replacement cost versus actual cash value for what you are looking for.
Eligibility, and one word that changes the answer
PURE publishes a threshold on its own quote call to action, and the exact wording is the whole thing: “PURE is designed exclusively for homes insured for $1 million or more.”
Insured for. Not valued at. That is a reconstruction figure, not a listing price. In much of the Pacific Northwest those two numbers diverge sharply in both directions. A 1920s house on a valuable lot can sell well above a million and insure for less. A custom build on inexpensive land can be the reverse. Dwelling coverage versus market value covers why they drift apart.
Openly publishes no dwelling minimum. Its high value framing is definitional: a high-value home typically has a replacement cost significantly higher than standard properties due to its size, location, materials, or custom features. Its agent page describes the HO-5 target as modern, well-maintained primary and secondary homes.
Availability, including the Washington problem
Here the published information is asymmetric, and it favours Openly.
Openly publishes its list. Its carriers write in 24 states as of September 2026: Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. Idaho appears on Openly’s agent page as coming soon, a status that changes without a press release. Washington is not on Openly’s list.
PURE publishes no admitted state list. We checked its About, Financial Strength, Reciprocal Model, Subscriber Savings Account and Risk Management pages and there is none. What PURE does publish is that its Wildfire Mitigation Program is available to members in a list of states including Idaho, Oregon and Washington. That indicates members there. It is a service list, not a licensing or appetite list.
There is a second PURE list, and it is published. PURE Specialty Exchange is the surplus lines side, and its high value homeowners coverage is distributed through PURE Programs. The March 19, 2024 PURE Programs announcement names the states where that coverage was made available: Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Utah and Wyoming as the states added at that time, alongside Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey and South Carolina. Oregon, Washington and Idaho are on none of it. We found no published PURE Specialty Exchange or PURE Programs state list that includes any of the three. Two qualifiers travel with that. The list is dated, and a surplus lines program can add a state without a press release, so it should be re-checked rather than treated as current. And an absence from a published list is an absence of published information, not a statement about what any carrier will or will not do on a particular address. Retrieved September 23, 2026.
If you are in Oregon, Washington or Idaho, that is the practical shape of the market: one of these two has a published answer for your state and the other does not.
Financial strength, named and dated
PURE. AM Best affirmed a Financial Strength Rating of A (Excellent) and Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings of “a+” (Excellent) for Privilege Underwriters Reciprocal Exchange and PURE Specialty Exchange on July 29, 2026, stable outlook. Read past the letter. AM Best assesses the balance sheet as strong but describes operating performance as marginal, noting it “has shown improvement in recent periods,” and names as offsetting factors the capital structure, which includes surplus notes from its parent, and reliance on reinsurance. Retrieved September 24, 2026. Worth flagging: PURE’s own website describes its rating as reflecting good operating performance, which is not the word AM Best used.
Openly’s carriers. Openly itself has no financial strength rating and should not be given one. AM Best upgraded MS Transverse Insurance Company to A+ (Superior) from A (Excellent), and its Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating to “aa” (Superior), on June 20, 2025, stable outlook, covering MS Transverse Insurance Group. Retrieved September 24, 2026. Note that Openly’s own legal disclosures page still described MS Transverse as A (Excellent) when we checked on September 23, 2026, over a year after the upgrade. Rock Ridge Insurance Company is described by Openly as an AM Best A- (Excellent) rated admitted carrier, and we have not captured the date of the most recent AM Best action on Rock Ridge, so we are not publishing one.
Service and loss prevention, which is not a tie
PURE publishes a substantial program: a risk manager home visit that includes an estimated cost to rebuild, a consultation called PURE360, monitoring technology including Ting and LeakBot, a Wildfire Mitigation Program with automatic enrolment in wildfire-prone areas, the PURE Situation Room, a loss prevention allowance of up to $2,500 for eligible members after a significant loss, art services and a catastrophe response team. PURE attaches a qualifier that should travel with any description: “Loss prevention programs are available to select members in select states.”
Openly does not publish a comparable loss prevention program in the material we reviewed. On a wildfire or water exposed property that is worth weighing rather than dismissing.
The service record runs the other way. Our independent review of Openly documents a split picture: strong coverage design alongside a Better Business Bureau complaint file, a repeated pattern of large renewal increases with no claim behind them, inspection-driven cancellations and non-renewals, and a Kansas Insurance Department consent agreement and final order against Rock Ridge Insurance Company dated August 12, 2025 concerning cancellation and non-renewal notices that were never mailed. Read it before you buy the product.
We have not published the equivalent complaint analysis for PURE, so we are not implying one. What PURE publishes about itself belongs here anyway: “when necessary, we have made the tough call to non-renew policies that no longer fit our criteria.” Member ownership is not a promise of permanent renewal. See high value home nonrenewal.
The questions that decide it
- Which entity is issuing this policy? For PURE, the admitted reciprocal or PURE Programs on surplus lines paper, and does it carry membership benefits. For Openly, Rock Ridge or MS Transverse.
- What does the dwelling settlement provision say in the actual form? Openly publishes its terms and its ten-state footnote. PURE’s are not published, so ask.
- What am I signing and contributing beyond premium, and for how long?
- Is my state on a published list, and is my total insured value near a cap?
- What happens after the first inspection, and at the first renewal?
The honest conclusion is that these two suit different households. A well maintained home in an Openly state, where the owner wants published terms and no membership machinery, is a different client from a household that wants risk management services, an art schedule and a claim on surplus. Neither is better in the abstract.
For a second read on a quote, compare your coverage or book a private client coverage review. Our PURE carrier page goes deeper on the reciprocal model, and how to compare high value home insurance quotes gives you the structure to run the two side by side.
Sources
PURE, About Us, Financial Strength, Reciprocal Model, Subscriber Savings Accounts and Risk Management pages at pureinsurance.com (retrieved September 23, 2026); PURE Specialty Exchange; PURE Programs, including the March 19, 2024 high value homeowners announcement. AM Best, PURE Insurance Group rating affirmation, July 29, 2026 (retrieved September 24, 2026). Openly, legal disclosures, homeowners coverage and agents pages (retrieved September 23, 2026). AM Best, MS Transverse rating upgrade, June 20, 2025 (retrieved September 24, 2026). Vantage Point Risk, Openly Insurance Review.