In today’s busy world, personal insurance seems to just happen. People buy insurance as a series of transactions. The necessary due diligence is rarely performed to assure that all aspects of your personal exposures are adequately covered. Do you know if your insurance is up to par with your needs? Are your personal assets exposed? Has anyone ever done an in-depth audit of your personal insurance? From our recent experience we have noticed that most often the answer to these questions is a resounding “No”.
As an ever growing part of our company, we continuously look at clients and prospects and try to answer their question, “What is in it for me?” This question prompted us to look at a group of new clients and perform a thorough audit, comparing the client’s actual personal property and liability exposures to their current in force insurance.
Performed on 26 of our newest clients, the audit revealed that a large percentage of the group’s coverage did not meet their needs. Our findings were the following:
- 81% of clients were missing coverage they needed.
- 60% were overcharged
- 72% were underinsured
- 75% wanted higher limits for mold coverage on their homeowner's policy
- 77% had insufficient liability limits thereby exposing their net worth to litigation
Our audit process consists of a questionnaire that allows us to focus on the specific coverage needs of our clients, as well as the limits required to adequately protect their assets. We ask exploratory questions that focus on the personal activities of the insured and their immediate family. These inquiries help to uncover needs such as workers' compensation for domestic staff, excess directors' & officers' liability for those that participate on any charitable or non-profit boards, and Employment Practices Liability for their domestic staff should they ever be sued by an employee for sexual harassment, wrongful termination, etc.
Once we complete our risk management study we compare our findings to the current coverage and credits in place. This allows us to prioritize the client’s needs and to determine which areas need to be addressed. In addition to any coverage gaps or exposures we find, we also make sure that all applicable credits are being applied.
We have also uncovered in our audit process that many of our new clients were missing valuable services available to them:
Risk Management Services
- Hurricane & Wildfire Protection Units.
- Residential Risk Management Assessment
- Residential Security Analysis
- Complimentary background checks on domestic staff
- Collection Management Services for Fine Arts and Antiques.
For information regarding an audit of your personal insurance, contact:
Chad Rustici
Personal Insurance Consultant
Private Client Group
Tel: 954.267.8574
Email: crustici@seitlin.com
