Quote:
Originally Posted by secondcurve
I'd try your home/auto insurer. Often, your insurance company requires all of your insurance business in order to provide the umbrella coverage. Vitabene is correct that your insurer may require you to raise existing coverages on your home and auto policies prior to issuing an umbrella. Umbrella insurance helps me sleep at night, although, as you can see, I don't sleep at night these days with all that is gong on in the financial markets. Who would have believed that Citi would fail?
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Most umbrella policies will not require you to have all policies with one agent or company, but you will have to provide the umbrella policy company with a copy(s) of other insurance policies not available to the Umbrella company and/or its agent.
Depending on the underlying risks (types of boats, cars, etc), the umbrella company may require a higher limit of liability on that policy...when I went from a 112 Hp outboard to a 135 Hp outboard on my 19 foot, that put me into a MPH category that was right at 45, and I had to increase my liability coverage for my boat from 300K to 500k.
Umbrella policies do not kick in until the appropriate underlying coverage is exhausted. For instance, if you did have an accident with a boat, with injuries, and were successfully sued for $1 million, your boat policy would have to pay in full (say $500K) first, and then your umbrella policy would kick in for the remaining $500K. If you were sued for $2 million, and only had a $1 million umbrella policy, you would be on the hook for half a mil.
I do not sell insurance, used to work as an underwriter in personal lines, and I would have my underlying insurance pretty much maxed out, especially in our litigeous society (please don't start a commentary here on that subject
.)