Used car dealers have a seasonal demon to watch out for and this is the time of year it rears its head. I’m talking about hailstorms. If one sweeps across your lot you are likely to suffer a huge amount of property damage. In fact, some of the biggest claims we see are from these Spring and Summer hailstorms. Do you know if you have the right protection?

Hailstorms are often local in their impact but if it happens over your lot, you can expect huge losses to your inventory. Most used car dealers have their inventory stored outside and are vulnerable to hail losses but this is the type of protection that many car dealers don’t think about until it is too late. So how do you know if you have coverage?

Well fortunately the garage insurance policy is a standardized form so it is easy to know if you have the coverage. Hail coverage is a part of your comprehensive coverage which is part of the dealers open lot coverage for your cars. The dealers open lot insurance coverage will have a section with a limit and deductible for both collision and comprehensive coverages.

Pull out your policy right now and check to see that you have a limit of coverage for comprehensive coverage on your dealers open lot section. Now, also check out how the deductible reads. The standard form has a per vehicle deductible and a maximum per loss deductible. The per loss limit is typically 5 times the per vehicle deductible. So, if you have a $500 deductible on your comprehensive per vehicle, then you probably also have a $2500 maximum deductible per event. There are a few companies out there that set their policies up so that the only deductible is per loss, not per vehicle. This is an important distinction. In my previous example this would increase your claim payment from the insurance company by $2000. For more information about per vehicle deductibles and what is available out there, read my earlier blog here.

If you need any help at all interpreting your deductibles or how they might pay in a claim, please feel free to give us a call, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at www.TheAutoDealersHelper.com. We specialize in helping used car dealers with their insurance needs all across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia.

Many North Carolina homeowners will be losing coverage on their homeowners insurance policy over the next few months. Most won’t bother to read the fine print in their renewals so they won’t even know what they lost. Hopefully, for those of you astute enough to follow this blog, this won’t be the case.

What has changed in NC regarding the homeowners insurance policy is that the coverage for backup of water or sewer, which is an add on endorsement that you can purchase, is going to have new limits on how much will be paid out in the event of a claim. Let me start by saying that this coverage is not included in your home insurance policy unless you add it by endorsement. Some people don’t need this endorsement at all, and others absolutely should not be without it. To learn more about the sewer backup endorsement and who needs to buy it, please read my blog about back of sewers and drains coverage.

If you have this endorsement on your policy, then in the past this protection had the same limit of coverage as your home itself. So, for instance if you have $200,000 coverage on your dwelling, then with this sewer back up endorsement, then you would have $200,000 coverage for this type of loss. For all renewals with an effective date of June 1 2010 or later, this changes. Now instead you must choose a limit of coverage. The available limits are $5000, $10,000, $15,000, and $25,000. Probably in most cases one of these limits will be high enough to pay off the loss but there is really no way to know before the claim happens. It’s also fair to note that the cost of this protection is going up on a per dollar basis. That’s because where you used to have the same limit of coverage as your dwelling for around $25 per year cost, now that same $25 will probably buy you between $5,000 and $10,000 of protection, depending on which company you are insured with.

I urge everyone to read the letter that will come with your next renewal if you have this endorsement. Every company will handle this change differently but by and large, most of them will move your protection down to the $5000 coverage level. This is fine if you are confident that this is enough coverage to handle any claims you may have. But if not, then you will need to be proactive and contact your agent and ask for a higher limit.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we work hard to help all of our clients become informed insurance consumers. Whether you are looking for auto insurance, home insurance, life insurance or business insurance, please feel free to contact us for help and advice. You can call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.