Stronger together: Nationwide, Resideo team up to boost home protection

Jeff and Sara Cowan had just wrapped up a family holiday trip shortly after Christmas when they arrived home to a disaster. While they were gone, their furnace had stopped working. The resulting drop in temperature in their house caused an upstairs bathroom pipe to burst, and water had been flooding into their house for days, damaging rooms on all three floors and leaving two feet of water in their basement.  

“We didn’t even know where to start,” said Jeff. “So much of our home was ruined. We had to scramble to find a place to stay and spend hundreds of dollars we didn’t really have on basic things for us and the kids just to make it through the next week. Salvaging our lives and getting back into our home took months.”  

The Cowans aren’t alone in experiencing this challenge. Events like these are becoming more frequent and ever more costly to U.S. consumers. The 2022 U.S. Home Trends Report from LexisNexis indicates that the frequency of these accidents is increasing, jumping nearly 25% from 2015-2021, while the cost of preventable losses like ones the Cowans suffered nearly doubled during that same period.  

This stark new reality is why two of the most trusted brands in home protection have partnered to tackle the problem of reducing preventable losses like these. Resideo Technologies, the global provider of Honeywell Home smart thermostats and First Alert® solutions that provide home comfort, life safety and security to over 150 million homes globally, and Nationwide, one of the country’s largest home insurers, are working together to help prevent situations like the Cowans experienced from happening to others.

Resideo's First Alert Water Leak and Freeze Detector can be added to areas in the home prone to water leaks.

These two companies believe that blending Resideo’s home comfort and safety solutions and national professional installation relationships – HVAC, plumbing, electrical and security dealers – with Nationwide’s breadth of solutions and expertise will reshape the future of protection for customers.  

Through this packaged combination of solutions, insights, and their respective customer experiences, the companies believe they can save consumers time and money through tech-enabled prevention notifications. Homeowners that take advantage of the preferred device packages, to be announced in early 2024, may also be eligible for a discount on their homeowners insurance through Nationwide, helping to offset the cost of device purchase and installation.  

Beth Riczko, President of P&C Personal Lines at Nationwide, is excited to lead in this space. “With millions of Americans using smart devices in their homes, Nationwide believes now is the time to take the lead on Smart Home protection that can save customers from unexpected headaches and expenses. Resideo has a broad and innovative portfolio of smart home solutions, and a vast customer base that can help us both accelerate learning and value creation for our customers.”  

Dana Huth, Resideo’s Chief Revenue Officer concurs, “We are committed to protecting what matters most and creating new forms of value for our customers. Partnering with Nationwide, who has a similar focus and aligned mission, will be an accelerant to meaningful savings of time, effort and money for U.S. consumers.”  

Jeff and Sara Cowan loved the idea of a smarter home that would help avoid this type of personal catastrophe in the future.  

“It would have been great if we had known what was going on while we were hundreds of miles away,” said Sara after learning about the purpose of the partnership. “Having someone help notify us when something like this happens so we could do something about it before it destroys our home would have been great. If it helps save us money in the meantime, that’s even better!”  

While the specifics of this newly formed alliance are still being finalized, leaders from both companies advise to watch for interesting applications of insights, collaborations across their respective ecosystem partners, and new experiences that lead to smarter, safer home ownership. 

For more information, read the news release from Oct 24, 2023.