In the event of severe weather, most don’t know specifically how they are covered.
Though the importance of homeowners insurance is undisputed among most people who have purchased a house, the sad truth is that the majority of policyholders don’t actually know what kind of coverage they have in the event that a storm should come along and cause damage to their properties.
A MetLife survey’s results have shown that 31 percent don’t know exactly how much coverage they have.
Equally, another 46 percent of the respondents couldn’t say which of their personal items were included within their homeowners insurance policy’s coverage. It is important to understand how much coverage you have in order to know whether or not you are adequately insured, and to know what to expect if you should ever need to make a claim.
The majority of people believe that all homeowners insurance provides the same coverage.
Now that the summer severe weather season has started, insurers and organizations such as the American Insurance Association are advising people to learn more about their coverage and understand how they should deal with the aftermath of storm damage.
To start, it is recommended that policyholders either sit down with their homeowners insurance policies and read through what it means so that they understand their coverage, or contact their insurer or agent in order to have it explained to them. This is important because while policies were quite similar at one time, there is a very broad range of coverage available nowadays, and this differs from one company to the next, and from one product to the next.
For example, some policies will provide payments to replace food that spoiled in the refrigerator during an extended power failure. However, others will not. Moreover, among those that do, there are certain conditions. Some will cover regardless of the cause of the power failure, while others will only pay you for the food only if your direct power line was damaged and not a general power loss to the entire neighborhood. Yet others require you to have separate spoilage coverage.
By reviewing your homeowners policy, you’ll understand precisely what conditions will allow you to make a claim, and which will require you to pay out of pocket.
