Insurance Policy Checkpoint – How to Ensure You’re Not Under or Over-Insured

By Michael Hollis

One of the services we offer our wealth management clients is a review of your property and casualty policies – home and auto insurance. There’s nothing that irks me more than when someone has paid for something they don’t need or is overpaying for something they do need. Yearly, we ask our clients to send us their insurance declarations so we can help you maximize your transfer of risk and minimize your cost. And we are never trying to sell you something you don’t need. We always want to ensure that your assets are protected from risks and that you are covered by the insurance you need, not the add-ons you don’t need.

Behind the Curtain: Our Insurance Review Process

We ask you to upload your full insurance declarations, including information about your property and vehicles. Next, we dig into the value of your vehicles and real property to determine replacement and rebuild costs. Then, we go line by line to check that your policies align with our checklist of recommended insurance parameters. Finally, we produce a list of suggested coverage changes or additions based on your unique financial picture. Maybe you’re better off with higher deductibles because you’ve built wealth and can sustain small losses, maybe we find out you have coverage for hundreds of thousands of dollars of personal property when you know you have a house full of IKEA ready-to-assemble products. We always look at your picture as if it were our own and ensure your interests are protected.

We strive to educate you along the way. If it’s something you’re interested in, we want you to understand your policy as well as we do. That knowledge will give you confidence when unraveling the sometimes complex world of auto and property insurance. From there, we always have you engage your current insurance provider to obtain their proposal for the recommended changes. Sometimes, you’ve been with the same company for years, and you feel good about their service and claims process. That’s great! But maybe you’re interested in obtaining competitive quotes alongside their proposal. In that case, we have an independent insurance agent that we work with regularly whom we have vetted and trust completely to serve your interests. 

An Umbrella for a Rainy Day

Your limits of liability are an essential consideration. We look at your assets – your total net worth – and help you obtain policies that protect you completely. Once you get over half a million dollars in net worth, we direct you towards an umbrella policy that rides over the top of your auto and home insurance to increase the underlying liability limits. It’s a good problem having the kind of assets that require an umbrella policy! And the great thing is umbrella policies are unbelievably cheap! A $1 million policy is typically a few hundred dollars a year – well worth the protection for the cost.

So, if you haven’t had us examine your insurance coverage, contact us today. If you’re a client, it’s as easy as uploading your documents to the secure vault and emailing team@thedalagroup.com to let us know. We’ll contact you if we need additional information and get back to you with our recommendations. If you’d like to wait until your annual review, we’ll include a request for your most recent policies as part of the review process. We hope you take advantage of this service. It’s just another way we provide value to you as a client. This way, you can have confidence that you have the proper protections and none of the ones you don’t need. If you’re looking for a financial advisor like us, who takes a look at your whole financial picture, contact us today to set up a New to Our Firm meeting.