Is Your Homeowners Insurance in Shape for Summer?

This may be a good time to check up on your homeowners insurance coverage.

Hurricane season begins on June 1. Even if you don't live in a coastal region, tornadoes, floods, fires or earthquakes could threaten your domicile. So it pays to be prepared.

First and foremost, you need to make sure your homeowners insurance coverage is in place. Buy your coverage from a strong insurer to avoid the financial nightmare of your insurer going out of business exactly when you need it the most.

TheStreet.com Ratings' list of the 20 strongest homeowners insurers is made up of large and medium-sized companies that are well capitalized, have been consistently profitable during the past five years, have done a good job of predicting claims and setting aside adequate reserves and are operationally stable.

Many of the companies on this list are not household names, so you may not recognize them, but if you're shopping for homeowners insurance you should check them out. It's easy enough to see where they offer coverage by going to their Web sites.

If you're interested in insurers that aren't on the list, you can find them in our Insurance Ratings Screener.

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The two largest insurers on the list are United Services Automobile Association (USAA) and Allstate Insurance Company, a unit of Allstate(ALL - Cramer's Take - Stockpickr). They wrote $1.6 billion and $3.3 billion, respectively, in homeowners' premiums in 2007. Both companies write homeowners and auto insurance throughout the U.S.