As we grow older, our estate also grows: a big house, a secondary residence, income property, investments, etc. Of course, you would surely like to protect your assets and financial wealth in the event that a lawsuit exceeds your current liability insurance contract! For this reason, Assurances Multi-Risques would like to teach you more about personal excess liability insurance, commonly referred to as umbrella insurance. And we haven’t forgotten business owners: we’ll discuss business excess liability insurance in a future article.
Why should individuals have umbrella insurance?
Umbrella insurance is used, first of all, to increase and broaden your basic liability insurance limits for both your home and vehicle insurance. So, imagine that you are responsible for a fire in the condo you rented in Florida, causing 4 million dollars in damage. Your home insurance coverage might not cover all the expenses! However, if you have umbrella insurance, it will cover the difference. Assurances Multi-Risques strongly recommends that people who travel a lot have umbrella insurance in order to increase their civil liability limit, and, by doing so, protect their financial assets.
Umbrella insurance also covers certain gaps that you might have in your civil liability insurance contract. For example, personal injury (moral damages), usually excluded from this type of coverage, is covered by most excess liability insurance policies. So, for example, in the event that your son or daughter falsely accuses their hockey coach of sexual assault, you could be prosecuted, because the term “insured” includes your dependent child. This type of litigation may be very expensive, but, fortunately, your umbrella insurance will cover you.
Similarly, umbrella insurance would also cover you if the organization where you volunteer as a member of the board of directors were prosecuted for mismanagement. In fact, even if several NPOs have directors’ and officers’ insurance, few have it for volunteer members.
Umbrella insurance is for everyone!
And don’t go thinking that umbrella insurance is just for multimillionaires! Intended for everyone, it covers assets such as your boat, secondary residence, income property or different investments that you’ve accumulated over time, in addition to protecting you against potential prosecution.
In short, investing in umbrella insurance is inexpensive, especially when you think of all the expenses it may allow you to avoid. We suggest that you contact an independent insurance broker so that they can give you more information in this regard and analyze your needs, and, most importantly, to ensure that your financial assets are protected!