Umbrella (Excess Liability)

The Umbrella Policy: 3 Reasons You Should Have One

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“It is better to walk in the sunshine with an umbrella than to walk in the rain without one.” -Taylor Agency

Owning a business, home, car, or boat can bring lots of fun and great memories. But the more you have, the more you have to lose. Unfortunately, lawsuits have become the norm in our society. They are on the news, in the paper, and even blasted on social media. Businesses can experience a workers’ compensation claim or employment discrimination incident that can trigger a lawsuit. At home, a pool or auto accident can end with you getting sued.

You hope it won’t happen, but how do you protect yourself in the event of a lawsuit? An umbrella policy is extra liability coverage that can be added to your homeowner’s, commercial, auto, or other insurance. This is an additional layer of protection for your assets in the event that you or your property causes damage to another person.

To break it down, here are three major reasons to have an umbrella policy for a home, auto, or business:

  1.  Added protection
    1. This policy adds protection to business or personal assets. The policy kicks in when the limits on your original policy have been exhausted, which is not hard to do in a lawsuit. Instead of having your home or car seized, your umbrella policy will pay the price up to its limits.
  2.  Broader protection
    1. It also has broader coverage for a general liability claim that your general liability policy does not cover. Discuss the details of your general liability policy with your agent to find out how an umbrella policy will benefit you specifically.
  3. Affordable protection
    1. Most carriers will require you to carry a certain amount of liability insurance on your policy before selling an umbrella policy to you; however, when it is time to purchase an umbrella policy, it is less than $400 per year for $1 to $2 million of protection (Trusted Choice).

Talk to your agent today to find out how you can make sure that you and your assets are adequately covered with the addition of an umbrella policy!

Umbrellas in Sunny August

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“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

Conceptually speaking, your ordinary wire canvased umbrella is an extremely well designed tool for protecting you on rainy days, and that is exactly why the insurance industry coined the word when naming what is known as umbrella insurance. Characteristically, umbrella insurance adds an additional layer of liability protection to your existing insurance, and as its name suggests, an umbrella policy can even guard against insurance gaps that your primary insurance will never cover.

Quite frankly, when it rains, it pours, and when it pours, an umbrella policy shields you against the financial burden of exhaustive lawsuits. As your underlying liability limits run out of funds, all of your hard earned assets are now at risk for becoming financial fodder to pay legal settlements. This includes your car, your house, any retirement accounts, vacation/rental homes, watercrafts, any businesses, and it even includes the future income you intend to earn from your assets. So when considering what is really at risk, an umbrella policy becomes an extraordinarily powerful financial planning tool to ensure that your investments are there for you in the future.

At Taylor Agency, we understand what “rain” insurance can do for you, and we want you to know it is available for you. According to the TrustedChoice© Independent Agent website, the standard $1 million to $2 million protection offered by an umbrella policy costs an average of $380 per year. From our perspective, that qualifies as the cheapest lawyer you will ever retain, so let us put our professional insurance agents on your team and see what real value we can offer you in protecting your financial future.

-Taylor Agency

As a TrustedChoice© Independent Insurance Agent, we pledge that you are a person and not a policy. Call us and experience the difference. If you would like to learn more about umbrella insurance online, visit the trusted choice website here.