What’s the deal with insurance “floaters?”
The fact is most people don’t think about insurance until they need it. Another unsettling fact is that your regular homeowner’s insurance policy may not cover items such as jewelry, watches, fine art, sports memorabilia, and other collectible and luxury items for theft. If those items are covered, the coverage can be meager and subject to policy exclusions and/or limits.
That’s why every policy owner needs to consider purchasing additional coverage in the form of a “policy floater” or request a “limit change” to increase the base policy.
A jewelry schedule or policy floater is supplemental coverage added to your existing insurance policy that specifically insures valuable items. Jewelry (wedding rings) are the most common item we schedule. By scheduling a particular piece of jewelry, we identify and value that item so that if its lost, damaged or destroyed, the insurance company will either replace or offer agreed value for the insured item. Two important benefits to a scheduled items floater are that there is usually no deductible and “lost” items can be covered.
We also often run into situations where our insured may not have any items of significant value but has MANY small value items. An example might be that you have nothing valued over $1,0000 but might have 10 pieces of collectible costume jewelry. If the policy limit is $2,500 for jewelry and there is a fire, $2,500 is all that the insurance company is obligated to pay. To solve this problem, we can usually offer an unscheduled jewelry floater. This allows us change to limit of the policy to cover those smaller items beyond the base policy limits.
*** Again, items such as jewelry, watches, fine art, sports memorabilia, guns, and other collectible and luxury items can have little to no coverage on a basic homeowner’s policy. Please review your policy and/or contact the agency to determine if changing coverage is needed. All policies are different. The above examples are generalized, and the policy determines actual coverage.