Sammarusich Blog

Whenever you work with a real estate agent to buy a new home there is one real estate truism that consistently bursts out their lips: Location, location, location! From the real estate agent’s point of view, the location of your home is the most important aspect to consider when buying because everything else about your home can be changed. Floors, walls, ceiling, even landscaping of your new home can be altered beyond recognition, but the neighborhood, the view and the area your home is in is something that cannot be edited, influenced or changed in any way.

When it comes to underwriting your home insurance policy, your underwriters also consider your location an extremely important consideration-but not for the same reason as your real estate agent. Your underwriter doesn’t care about how your view, location or neighborhood influence your life-they care about the innate risks that these factors carry.

Certain locations could be high crime areas. While you might think that the location is bound for a renaissance and is a good investment, your home insurance underwriter is going to look at the practicality of living in a crime-filled area and is going to consider how this will affect your experience. Since it means that you are a higher risk for theft, they will likely add extra premium dollars to help hedge that risk.

If you live in a home with a wonderful view of the water it might make waking up every morning a glorious experience, but it also means that you could be more likely to suffer storm damage during a hurricane. The insurance underwriters don’t care about your glorious morning routine, they care about the fact that you are delivering increased risk based on your home’s location, and they are going to charge extra for that.

So remember, it is one thing to fall in love with the view, the neighborhood or the architecture of your home before you buy it, but it is a whole different story to think about how these considerations will affect your home insurance underwriting. Before buying a home, condo or townhouse, try to find a balance between a location that makes you happy and that makes your underwriters feel safe about issuing your policy. Then you’ll end up with insurance that you can afford and a home that you love-and what could be better than that?

There’s one sneaking, creeping, crawling, biting, whimpering consideration you have probably not made when looking into your home insurance quote, and that is the impact that your pet might have on your home insurance quotes. You see, depending on the type of pet you have, you may find that the price of your home insurance rates are affected by the furry little beast you call family.

Generally, most breeds of cats and dogs will not cause your home insurance rates to go up. But if you have a breed that is associated with aggression and dog bites, like a Pit Bull or Rottweiler, then you will likely experience an increase in premiums. The reason for this is because if your dog bites someone, then they can place a claim against your home insurance policy for the medical expenses caused by the treatment of the bite. They may even get some additional funds for stress and damages. By walking your dog on a leash and having a securely fenced area for the dog to play in you will reduce your likelihood of risk and may even reduce your premiums. Likewise, some exotic pets like monkeys, dingoes and sloths might carry increased premium risks. You’ll need appropriate pens and play areas to help keep your premiums down.

Another pet that may increase your home insurance premiums is a lizard or other cold-blooded creature. This may seem strange, but because you must have special warming lights and devices to keep your clod-blooded pet alive, it can increase your risk of having a fire which can increase your insurance premiums. Make sure to buy the right kind of equipment and keep it in good repair to help reduce your risk of a claim.

It is important that you disclose your pets to your home insurance company. You might think that by keeping your dangerous or risky pets a secret that you can get away without paying an increased premium. In reality, If you have a claim that is caused by these pets it will not be covered by your policy and you may even lose the policy because of your misrepresentation. It isn’t worth losing the investment you make in a home insurance policy to avoid the increased premium that certain pets can cause.

One of the most basic and popular types of life insurance policies available is the whole life insurance policy. Whole life insurance policies pay out a death benefit over your entire life, unlike term policies which only pay for a certain period of time. In addition, they accrue cash values.

Life Coverage in A Whole Life Policy

Whole life (or permanent life) insurance policies generally require medical underwriting and offers a death benefit for you entire life, as long as you pay your premiums in full and on time. If your health changes and you become uninsurable, it won’t matter as long as you keep your policy in-force. That is one of the benefits of a whole life insurance policy over a term life insurance policy, which will stop paying a life insurance policy after a pre-determined number of years.

Cash Value Growth and Accumulation

When you have a whole life insurance policy you pay more than just the cost of insurance. The additional premiums that you pay are put toward the accumulation of cash values. These cash values give your policy an added benefit that just a death benefit. Cash values can offer tax-free loans to the policy owner, a cash value given when the owner surrenders the policy and a source of funds for applied premium loans if the policy owner neglects to pay their premium.

Fixed Growth of Cash Values

One of the best aspects of a whole life insurance policy is that the policy’s cash values grow at a fixed rate. That means that instead of dealing with the ups and downs and general volatility in the stock market, you get fixed, guaranteed growth that is honored by the insurance company. In order to ensure that you choose an insurer that can both pay claims and keep your cash values growing according to the illustration, take the time to check the insurance company’s rating on AM Best. AM Best is a company that assesses the financial strength of insurers and assigns a letter rating representing their financial strength. When you choose a financially strong company then you can rest assured with the knowledge that your claims and cash value requests will be honored.

Insurance policies do not supply endless amounts of coverage. In fact, there is a limit to how much all of your insurance policies will pay for an insurable event-including your health insurance, home insurance and auto insurance. These caps are called limits and they protect your insurance company from committing an endless supply of dollars toward the reimbursement of your insurance incidents.

Imagine how difficult it would be to develop car insurance rates if you had no idea how much you might possibly have to spend on a particular accident. It would be almost impossible. From medical expenses to emotional damages, from property damage to auto damage-there is no end to the amount of money you could be responsible for without limits to your benefit set.

When you get your car insurance quotes and rates, you are asked to decide what kind of limit you want on your policy. The lower the limit you choose the less the insurance company knows it will have to spend per insurable interest-and that means the lower the rates you are quoted. But if you choose a limit that is too low in your eagerness to get cheap auto insurance rates then you run the risk of hurting yourself. Why? Well what do you think happens if it costs more to fix your car after an accident than the limit in your policy provides? That’s right-you have to pay it out of pocket. Any expense that exceeds your limit must be paid by you and if you don’t have the funds available then you run the risk of having your car in the shop and unrepaired much longer than you intended.

For guidance on limit setting, check with your mechanic to get an idea of repair and replacement costs for your car. Also, check with your insurance company to see if they have any data that will give you the average amounts for claims of various natures in your state. Lastly, make sure the limit you choose looks like one that will cover the bulk of any accident or insurable event and doesn’t seem like it will leave you paying out-of-pocket beyond your deductible.

Choosing an auto insurance policy is often considered to be all about the price of the policy. Sure you want the best coverage you can, and you want to be sure that you will get reimbursed for the types of accidents that are likely to happen to you, and absolutely you want to have the cheapest policy you can get, but what about choosing an auto insurance company that can actually afford to pay your claims?

Choosing an Insurance Company

One of the best ways to make sure you choose an auto insurance company that can afford your policy is to check the company’s AM Best rating before you take out the policy. AM Best is an insurance rating company that examines the financials of an insurer in order to determine how likely that insurer is to be able to pay the claims it receives. By checking the company’s balance sheets, income statements, insurance policy load and other information AM Best can get a good idea of whether or not they can handle their financial load.

Once they assess the financials they give a letter grade to each insurer. These letter grades give you an idea of just how capable AM Best things the insurer is. Generally, you want to choose an insurer with an A rating or higher. You don’t need a special sign in or a paid membership in order to access the ratings, you just need to go to the website and look up the insurance company.

Before you decide that you don’t need to worry about the rating of your insurer and instead can just pick the cheapest auto insurance rate and move on with your life, remember-an insurance company is only as good as its ability to pay your claims. If an insurer is unable to actually pay the claims of its premium paying clients than it is nothing more than just an empty promise-one that you pay for out of your own pocket.