Insurance World

Home owners insurance policies are designed to protect your house and personal property against losses from the perils listed in your policy.

Home owners insurance rates vary widely based on your geographic location. Areas prone to hurricanes, floods, hail, earthquakes, fires and other natural disasters will generally have higher rates. Even the distance to the nearest fire department or fire hydrant can have an impact on your home owners insurance rates.

Knowing Your Policy Is VERY Important
Coverage for Property and Possessions

Liability Coverage

Theft Off Premises

Additional Living Expenses

What Can a Homeowner Do To Be Prepared?

What Can a Homeowner Do To Save Money?
Coverage for Property and Possessions

Damage to the dwelling and the contents could be the biggest unexpected disaster awaiting a homeowner who has less coverage than needed. Most policies provide a stated maximum amount of coverage for the dwelling and another amount for contents.

Generally, dwelling coverage is based on replacement cost, which means that in the event of a total loss, the policy will provide reimbursement, up to the policy limit, to replace the structure. Ideally, a homeowner should buy enough insurance to completely rebuild the home, known as replacement value. This figure may not be the home’s actual market value or what the owner originally paid for the home. This is especially true in a depressed or an inflated market or if the home is simply not replaceable to its condition prior to the loss. Replacement cost policies, which may pay over the policy limit to rebuild the home, may be available from your insurer.

To determine how much insurance to purchase, an accurate appraisal of the home for replacement cost should be made. Working with your insurance company is important in this process. Most insurers recommend or require that a homeowner insure the dwelling for 100 percent of its full replacement value. Some homes, very unique ones such as national register-types or very elaborate ones, cannot be insured for exact replacement since some features are not replaceable in either workmanship, materials or practical costs. The insurer and/or the agent is the best source for these issues.

Coverage for personal property is different. Most policies provide actual cash value coverage for contents which includes depreciation, or full value contents without depreciation. Actual cash value means that if a power surge blows out a 10-year-old television set, the homeowner should know what to expect. Unlike full value contents coverage, which would essentially provide a new television set, actual cash value coverage allows the insurance company to calculate the useful life of the item and then depreciate the item to present value. A depreciated 10-year-old television set would be insured for only a fraction of its original cost. A homeowner may want to consider replacement cost coverage to be sure that the contents are adequately insured.

In addition to making sure that contents are covered for replacement cost rather than actual cash value, homeowners should purchase additional coverage for items that would ordinarily be subject to loss limitations. Virtually all policies cover contents loss up to the policy limit for items that include furniture, clothing, toys, accessories such as lamps and other items which are used for decor. Explicit limitations are set in the policy for high-cost items such as jewelry, fine art, furs, electronics, collectibles, oriental rugs and antiques. If a thief comes in and steals a two-carat engagement ring, it will not be covered well enough without what is commonly known as a personal property rider to cover specific, costly items. For more information on home owners insurance visit our specialist site below.

In about every four in ten cases when someone applies for Life Insurance, the insurer has to obtain a medical report from a General Practitioner.

They need the reports when someone has declared that they have a medical condition on their life insurance application form. The applicant then has to give consent that the insurance company can gain a medical report from their GP. The GP gets called on to supply information about the specifics of that medical condition and any other relevant information.

But despite the fact that these are often costly to get hold of for insurance companies, there have been cases where GPs have not been supplying the quality information that they need. In some cases, they simply print out the computerised records of their patients and send them to the insurers.

This is not just a problem because insurers have paid the doctors to supply specific reports, but that this approach means that they often do not get the specific information they need. And on top of this, the GP winds up breaching their patient’s confidentiality because the insurance company gets extra information about the applicant’s medical state that they do not need to know. It is a situation both the British Medical Association (BMI) and the Association of British Insurers (ABI) would not want to occur and goes against the agreement between both parties that medical information could be obtained for the purpose of Life Insurance applications.

But because of concerns, a new agreement between both the BMI and ABI has been made where GPs have to provide high quality reports to the insurance companies for fees that will consistently rise by 6% over five years.

The fees were re-set as part of the negotiation process for reports, supplementary reports and medical examinations.

An ABI spokesman for health insurance says that the reports help people to gain much needed health insurance, such as life insurance policies that they would otherwise not normally be able to obtain.
“This agreement is good news for customers because again the BMA has pledged to uphold high standards from doctors. This includes making sure that doctors fill in forms personally and accurately, rather than simply sending printouts of medical records, which does not give the insurer the information that it needs,” he says. “The deal provides both stability and certainty.”

For a GP report that needs to be obtained in the year from 2006 -2007, the cost is Ј74.70. That increases to Ј79.20 for the next year and Ј84.00 after that. For a supplementary report the cost increases from Ј19.10 this year, to Ј20.20 the year after that and Ј21.40 for the year after that again.

And medical examinations will this year cost Ј82.20, increasing to Ј87.10 in the year after that and then Ј92.30 in the following year.

The BMA tells GPs as part of the guidance in the new agreement that they need to recognise that life assurance is a “social good” and of benefit to patients at significant points in their lives.
And that, as with other fee paid work, the reports should be completed thoroughly to justify the fees.