Despite the name, high net worth insurance isn’t simply a variation on ordinary personal insurance with higher coverage limits and higher premiums. Instead, it’s about recognizing that people with large assets have unique needs.
One way high net worth insurance responds to this challenge is by bringing multiple areas of coverage and expertise together into a comprehensive insurance solution based on your individual needs. This usually includes coverage for your home(s), vehicles, travel and even life insurance.
How can high net worth insurance protect you?
Use the yellow hot spots and explore how high net worth insurance can help protect against common risks.
Water Damage
Risk Factor
Whether entering from outside your home from a flood or from within your home’s plumbing system, water damage is the most common cause of loss to a home. Many policies exclude losses caused by backup of sewers and drains, and all un-endorsed homeowner policies exclude damage caused by a flood.
Solution
Careful review is essential to protect your home and belongings from all sources of water damage. We recommend coverage solutions from insurance companies that include backup of sewers and drains. Also, identify cost efficient solutions to address the risk of flood damage in the first place.
Valuable Possessions Coverage
Risk Factor
Typically, there is a sublimit on homeowner insurance policies for valuable possessions, such as jewelry, furs, fine arts, and other collectibles.
Solution
Schedule your valuable possessions to ensure you’ll have the money to replace them.
Collector Cars
Risk Factor
Collector or classic vehicles often have significant value and require special documentation and unique insurance coverage to ensure they are adequately protected.
Solution
Insure your collector cars with a specialized insurance company that focuses on and understands the unique nature of collector or classic cars and other vehicles.
Cyber Risk Coverage
Risk Factor
With more smart technology in homes and technology at your fingertips, malware, hackers, and other cyber threats can jeopardize your security, finances, and reputation.
Solution
Identity theft, personal injury, and cyber risk coverage may be available as an important add-on coverage to your homeowners policy.
Workers Compensation / Employee Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI)
Risk Factor
Employing domestic staff in your home can have risks associated with them. They can become injured on the job, leaving you to pay out-of-pocket for their medical expenses. Additionally, staff can sue for wrongful termination, privacy issues, discrimination, and harassment claims.
Solution
Depending on the state, workers’ compensation coverage can be added by endorsement to your homeowners policy or as a stand-alone policy. It provides coverage for medical expenses when your staff are hurt while on the job. Additionally, employment practices liability insurance can protect you from high legal costs associated with lawsuits and additional claims from current and past employees.
Additional Living Expense
Risk Factor
When there is substantial damage to your home due to unexpected events such as lightning, fire, or a storm, you may not be able to live in your home until it can be repaired or rebuilt. As a result, you could incur additional living expenses for lodging, food, and other daily needs.
Solution
Look for coverage that provides higher limits to ensure that your schedule and your standard of living is not compromised. Additional living expense coverage compensates you for the costs incurred for housing and other living expenses if a covered event makes your home temporarily uninhabitable while it’s being repaired or rebuilt.
Excess Liability Coverage
Risk Factor
You invite guests over for a pool party and one of them dives into the shallow end of the pool and is permanently injured. They hire a lawyer to represent them and after a long legal battle, you and your family are left financially responsible for their injuries.
Solution
An excess liability (or umbrella policy) increases your personal liability limits by adding protection over and above your current auto, boat or homeowners policies. Excess liability insurance is available as separate coverage and offers additional peace-of-mind knowing that you have the protection you need.
Fire
Risk Factor
Most fires are devastating. Besides the emotional impact, the physical damage to your home can be significant. If you lost your home to fire, do you have adequate insurance to replace your home and its contents? Remember, inflation rates on building materials and construction costs rarely track with real estate values. As a result, rebuilding a home can often cost significantly more than expected.
Solution
Make sure your homeowners policy contains replacement cost coverage with no cap. This protects you if the cost to reconstruct your home is higher than your current limit of coverage. And, be sure that your insurance includes rebuilding your home to code. Very often, local ordinances and building codes change over time, which may require additional costs.
Personal Liability
Risk Factor
In the unfortunate event that someone slips and falls while on your property, you and your family may be held liable for any injuries that result.
Solution
Your homeowners policy includes personal liability coverage to respond to incidents where injuries or damages occur to a third party where you may be deemed negligent. However, you should consider purchasing an excess liability policy to provide additional coverage limits to protect your assets in case a lawsuit is brought against you.
Flood Coverage
Risk Factor
You do not have to live near a body of water to suffer loss due to flooding. With the changing weather patterns and more damaging storms occurring around the globe, flood losses are becoming more common in places that are not normally prone to flood damage. Your homeowners policy does not cover damage from flooding. Could your home be at risk?
Solution
Purchase a flood insurance policy to protect your home and covered contents from certain types of flood losses as designated by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). In the U.S., a flood policy is purchased as a separate policy through the federal program (NFIP) or through a servicing carrier known as a write-your-own carrier. Additionally, you may be able to purchase excess limits on your homeowners policy to better protect your home.
Secondary Home / Rentals
Risk Factor
Owning a secondary home or rental property has the potential of increasing your liability exposures.
Solution
Be certain that you extend the liability coverage under your homeowners policy to include your secondary home. You should also consider including the secondary home under an excess liability policy to provide for additional liability limits.
Travel Insurance
Risk Factor
Affluent individuals travel internationally four times more than the average person, and many people assume there is automatic coverage that extends from their U.S. policies. This isn’t true. Auto liability is just one example, but other exposures often not considered are kidnap/ransom (a growing criminal business) and the complexities of navigating a foreign medical system in the event of a serious illness or injury while traveling abroad. Medical care in many countries is often sub-standard, and a “care facility” (hospital) could be far way.
Solution
Not many insurance companies provide the unique coverage needed for individuals who frequently spend time outside the United States, whether for personal or business reasons. It is important to work with those companies who not only extend auto liability outside the U.S., but also provide kidnap, ransom, and medical evacuation coverage. It is also important that these carriers have office locations outside the U.S. in the unfortunate event that claims services might be needed.
Equipment Breakdown
Risk Factor
While your homeowners policy covers a wide array of perils, such as damage caused by a fire or a falling tree, it doesn’t cover some common types of problems that can occur to the equipment in or around your home. For example, a sudden surge from the local power plant might damage appliances, HVAC systems, or your home power generator.
Solution
Add mechanical breakdown coverage to your homeowners policy. If you have multiple homes, it can be purchased for each one individually. Keep in mind that while it does protect against major events, it does not cover normal wear and tear.
Special Event Coverage
Risk Factor
Planning a wedding, bar mitzvah, bat mitzvah, family reunion, or other private event is stressful enough. The last thing you should worry about is severe weather (such as a hurricane) that could cause you to postpone the event. Or, what happens is a vendor goes out of business or declares bankruptcy before your event and you lose your deposit?
Solution
No matter how carefully you plan, things outside of your control can go wrong. Purchase insurance coverage for your event. It’s typically not very expensive and helps keep you focused on all of the things that go into making your event truly memorable.
Mold Coverage
Risk Factor
Insurance companies often limit coverage to remediate mold that arises from a covered loss.
Solution
With many homeowners unaware of this risk or the limits of their own coverage, be sure to discuss the coverage options and loss prevention solutions to help reduce this risk.
The solution is custom-designed for your particular lifestyle, assets and risks rather than simply combining “off-the-shelf” policy terms and conditions.
For example, you may want to look for coverage that ensures you’ll be able to repair a damaged vehicle using the repair shop of your choice and factory-original parts. You may also want to have your vehicle insured for the “agreed value” rather than the market value. This means that you and the insurance company agree to the payout amount upfront in the event of a total loss claim.
Of course, there are other unique risks to consider, as well. Household help (such as nannies or landscaping crews), identity theft, international travel and more all have specialized insurance solutions to protect your wealth.
As your net worth grows, you gain access to a new world of privileges, challenges and opportunities. You have the ability to make a better life for yourself and to make a lasting impact on the world around you.
At Element Risk we understand that with these new opportunities come new risks. We welcome the chance to talk about how to protect what you’ve built so you continue to enjoy and share what you’ve been given.
To discuss how high net worth insurance can meet your needs, contact us today.