Named Insured – Do You Have it Right? 

Do you have a financial investment in a piece of real property (primary residence, rental property, and/or commercial property) that is owned with others?  Do you live in a home where your name is not on the title of the house, but you believe you and your belongings are covered under the owner’s home insurance policy? Is there more than one family living in your home, or do you sublease an office space from another business?

Chances are if you answered yes to any of these questions you may not be insuring the real property or your belongings properly. In order to protect your assets you need to make sure you have the proper named insured listed on the policy.  It doesn’t matter if we are talking about personal lines policies or commercial policies; the named insured(s) needs to be listed properly on the policy based on the financial interest in the property.  The named insured is the person, people or entity(ies) shown in the declaration page.

For example, if you and another person own 50% each of a property, but you insure the property solely with only your name listed on the policy you may be unhappy when the claims adjuster settles the claim.  You may only be reimbursed for 50% of the loss regardless if you insured the entire structure.  Your percentage of insurable interest would be paid based on your ownership percentage as the listed named insured, and not the loss amount.  What happens to the other partner?  Unless the other person is named on the policy, there could be no coverage for them. While they did have an insurable interest in the property, their interest was not identified.

Another reason to update the named insured on your insurance policy is if you transferred title of the property into a trust. It is the responsibility of the owner of the property to provide the correct named insured and additional named insured(s) on the policy to protect from uninsured or partially insured losses.  You don’t want to be told you have an uninsured loss when a claim occurs.

Please call us to make sure you have the named insured(s) listed appropriately on your policy.