January 11, 2021

The San Francisco Bay Area Home, Auto, Umbrella Package

Welcome to 2021, hopefully a much better year than 2020. With all of the crazy events of the past year: The Coronavirus, the Lockdown, Wildfires, and Events in Washington, its easy to forget about your overall insurance portfolio. Don’t worry we haven’t – its still our core mission: Personal Lines Insurance Packages in the SF Bay Area of California.

What is a Personal Lines Package? Loosely defined a Package of Personal Lines policies generally include the Home and Automobile policies and usually is capped off with an Umbrella insurance policy. They may also include an earthquake or flood insurance policy as well. There are other, less common, types of policies that may be lumped in as well: Excess Umbrella, Motorcycle, RV, Boat, and various Business Policies.

Now a days few insurers will write all of these policies under one true package, meaning just one policy number. However many insurers are still writing all of these as their own distinct policy with their own policy number and large multi policy discount.

Benefits of Procuring all of your Personal Lines Policies through One Insurer:

Many consumers assume that now a days that all of their contracts should be purchased through the same insurer – and this is often the case. The benefits of this are multiple:

Potential Insurance Savings:

The most obvious reason is cost savings. Most auto policies will allow you discounts when you have a home and or umbrella policy and vice versa with the home. Saving money on these types of insurance is important and its a primary reason.

Please note though that this is NOT always the case, especially if you have some sort of complex risk. [Talk with an independent agent in this situation.]

Tighter Insurer Coverage:

If your home and auto are with the same insurer the coverage is by definition tighter. This is difficult to explain – but numerous potential problems exist when the coverages are spread out. Sometimes there is nothing you can do about it – but if you can get it all one one reasonably priced insurer – consider doing it.

The One Total Bill Solution:

This is a significant hidden benefit to buying a package of home, auto, and umbrella insurance. One billing insurance company, possibly under just one insurance bill. I have said in my blog posts numerous times, that one of the biggest risks that we all face with our insurance is failure to pay their insurance bill on time.

Just One Insurance Agent for your Personal policies:

You do not necessarily have to one insurer to have the same agent, but often it is the case. I have numerous clients that come to me wanting me to help them and my response, sadly is – “I think that that is the other insurance agent – please contact them.” I dislike having to respond this way, but its all I can do.

Are there any Negatives with Having All of your Your Personal Lines Policies with One Insurer?

Yes, yes there can be. But, I would not say that there are many drawbacks, just a few.

If you have a poor insurer on your auto policy than you might just be repeating it with your home insurer. This is probably the greatest issue.

Its possible that having your policies together will not result in the lowest premium which could end up costing you more money.

In addition if you have all of your policies with one Non Independent [IE a Captive Agent] you might not even know that another insurer can provide better insurance coverage for less money.

How do you Know if the Home, Auto, Umbrella Package is for you?

Determining if the Home, Auto, Umbrella package from the same insurer is for you – is pretty simple, but will require some work. Reach out to either another captive agent or an Independent Agent and have them quote out the entire product with them. They will need to see your current declarations pages and usually have lots of questions for you such details about your home, autos, and claims hisotry.

Listen to her or him and feel free to ask lost of questions. I always encourage clients to learn a bit about the insurances that they have during this insurance shopping experience.

If the coverages, premiums, and relationship all work out – it might well be time to change over your package of personal lines policies to a new insurer and maybe even a new agent.