High Value Home Insurance
"We believe it falls on us to educate our customers, and our industry needs to do a far better job of doing so. Insurance is a part of your financial plan, and we are here to help protect what you have built."
Properly Insuring to Value - Is Your Home Underinsured?
As an agency Cru Insurance conducts a comprehensive front-end dwelling analysis to ensure that, in the event of a loss, you are adequately insured to value. During this process we often uncover and correct problems in your current insurance coverage. It is common for us to review existing home policies and notice that a previous insurance agent calculated the construction value of your home using inaccurate or incomplete information, which means you are most likely significantly underinsured. For example, we might find "wood paneling" and "ceramic tile" were used in previous reconstruction cost calculations instead of "custom millwork" and "imported Italian marble." Cru Insurance and its high net worth insurance carriers independently analyze your home when writing your home insurance coverage to ensure you are covered adequately.
We say it often, but
Why Does Insuring to Value Matter So Much | Co-insurance
"Insuring to value" is a very important insurance principal and often misunderstood by both clients and insurance agents. Here is the #1 Home Insurance FAQ - "I don't foresee a total loss, so why do I need insurance for the value of the entire home?" The answer has a few layers. First, a total loss is exactly what you do want to insure against - the largest possible financial loss event. If you want to your reduce your premium by self-insuring to a degree, then the appropriate solution is raising your deductible. You will share in more of the loss, but your premiums will be lower, and you will still be insured against a major catastrophic event. Second, is the concept of co-insurance, which is a universal insurance principal designed to make sure the principal of insurance stands. Click here to read a math-based example of how co-insurance works. A simple thing to remember about co-insurance: if you insure half of the value of your home, the insurance company will see you as the insurer of half of the value of the property, and you will be responsible for your pro-rata portion of any loss whether its a 50,000 loss, a 400,000 loss, or a total loss. There are many reasons for requiring co-insurance, so ultimately, insurance companies will not insure only a portion of a dwelling's value, so property insurance is an all or nothing insuring agreement to provide coverage for your entire structure.
Why Does Insuring to Value Matter So Much | other coverages
The primary coverage amounts in your homeowners insurance policy are predicated as a percentage of your dwelling coverage amount. This means if your dwelling coverage amount is underestimated, then many of the other coverage amounts covering your personal property, detached structures (carriage houses, garages, pools, driveways, fences, and loss of use will also be lower than they most likely should be.
Why Does Insuring to Value Matter So Much | Home Repairs
Our beautiful Charleston, South Carolina is full of unique homes, some built in the 1800's and some showcasing unique architecture and costly craftsmanship. A major part of the value a good insurance agent provides is knowing your home when they write the coverage. It may be a red flag if your insurance agent has minimal questions when putting together your home insurance proposal. You do not want your home insurance agent to guess at the materials used to finish your interior - a very common practice. Your agent should spend sufficient time and energy gathering your home's build specifications, use software to calculate the reconstruction cost, and carefully present that to your carrier. Likewise, the insurance company you choose with the help of your agent should thoroughly inspect your home to ensure the home is insured to value. Many well-known insurance carriers simply rely on the agent's representations, and most agents are designed to capture basic information for average homes, as opposed to detailed reports on high-end properties - think custom wood millwork, imported marble, architectural details, custom built cabinets, and wine cellars. This is why we often see homes insured at half their value or less, and it is our job to walk our client's through error of the past and the multiple reasons to insure to value.
Adequate Liability Protection - how much do you need?
Standard 1,000,000 Liability Limits
The most common dollar amount of liability insurance we see in Charleston home insurance policies is 300,000. Is this enough? Areas to consider are a neighbor's child drowning in your pool and you are sued because you weren't supervising the children, or a contractor falls off a ladder and has a neck injury. Liability insurance is widely regarded as the best "bang for your buck" in insurance, because it provides high amounts of coverage for relatively low additional premium. The accessibility of Cru Insurance represents high net worth carriers that offer standard liability coverage limits of 1,000,000 and higher.
