This past Saturday was a warm day, shorts and t-shirt weather for most of the day. The weather report called for a cool front to move in that afternoon and evening. It did and the collision of the cool front with the warm air moving up from the Gulf set off a chain of thunderstorms and up to 9 reported tornadoes that ranged from Waxahachie, through Garland, Rowlett, and past Lake Lavon in Collin County. The extent of damage wasn’t known until Sunday.
I received a phone call last week from a woman who was referred to me by a mutual friend. She’s relocating to Dallas after going through a divorce. She’d rented an apartment and needed renters and car insurance. We talked about what she owned for her quote, and she asked me a question I thought was interesting; would she really need renters insurance if the complex didn’t require it as a condition of her lease?
Last week’s post, An Introduction to Condo Insurance (see https://wiseinsurancegroup.com/an-overview-of-texas-condo-insurance/) addressed how to determine the amount of condo insurance needed and what it covers. There’s more to a condo policy, however, than covering the finish out of the home and your personal property or contents. There are other coverage items to consider including personal liability, medical coverage, deductibles, and home owner’s assessment.
Drone, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have made a huge splash in the news over the last year. Amazon has discussed using them for local delivery, one landed on the White House lawn, as well as, their war time use in the Middle East. The commercial uses for drones are seem almost endless as people imagine how they can be utilized. Hollywood has won approval to use them for filming movies, farmers believe they can be used to check on crops, as well as administer fertilizer and insecticides more efficiently and utility companies want to use them to check power lines. Insurance companies are planning to use drones in disaster response situations.
A client called me last month to discuss an accident he’d had and filing a car insurance claim. He’d backed into an object visiting a family member on a trip and damaged the bumper and one of the brake light kits on his car. I provided him with the information he needed to initiate the claim and transferred him to the claims department with his car insurance company.
I wrote a condo insurance policy last week for a new client. He’d started out with an offer for a single family home in the Dallas area which fell apart after the home didn’t appraise for the amount he offered. As he thought through what he desired in his next home, he decided to look at condos in the area. It turns out, he found the perfect home, but since it was the first condo he’s ever purchased, he had a lot of questions about condo insurance.
I work with several builders in the Dallas area of differing sizes. Some remodel homes, some build new and custom homes, while others finish out commercial office space. Regardless of the differences in the work they do, they all share several things in common when it comes to their commercial insurance.
One of the questions testers, legislators, and even insurance companies are asking is who or what is at fault when a self-driving car crashes? Will it be the other driver, the autonomous car, or some combination? In addition, what testing procedures will the automaker need to follow when testing the vehicle, and whose insurance covers an accident if the self-driving technology is to blame for the accident?
The 2015 hurricane season has started. It runs from June 1 through the end of November. Accuweather is forecasting another below normal year for hurricanes. They predict 8 tropical storms, 4 hurricanes, 1 major hurricane, and 2 to 3 that will make landfall. This year’s number is slightly lower than last year’s predictions. Like last year, the reason for the below normal storms predicted is attributed to El Nino wind patterns that tilt the spinning air which inhibits the formation of storms, as well as drier than normal air and cooler water temperatures in the Atlantic.
Before the data breaches at Anthem, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, and Target, there was Sony. In 2011, the Sony Playstation Network was hacked resulting in the theft of customer data. Sony pushed to have their insurer, Zurich, cover the losses resulting from the data breach, but Zurich denied the claim. Sony had a general liability policy, but not a cyber liability policy with Zurich.
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