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Getting Good Building Insurance

Article by Albie Steyn
























If you have just bought a property with buildings already on it or are intending on building fixed structures, you probably need to have building insurance. Building insurance is cover against damages caused by natural disasters or people. It covers only the structure of the building itself, not the contents of the building. For that, you need contents insurance. Let us stick to building insurance for now.

There are a number of different options when it comes to building insurance, each different type will cover you for different damages.

The first type of building insurance is loss and damage insurance. This type of insurance covers you against acts of God. That means you are covered against damage caused by natural disasters as well as damage caused by usual weather patterns, like lightning strikes or rain damage. It will generally cover your actual home as well as any other buildings on your property.

You can include standard accidental damage cover in your building insurance policy. This will cover you for damages caused to external fittings and add-ons to your home like solar panels and the glass in your windows. It can also be extended to include the piping and cabling that runs to your house.

For those of us who are lucky enough to own more than one home and rent out the additional properties, can invest in building insurance to protect the building but not the tenants belongings. What happens to the tenants possessions is not the responsibility of the landlord. However, tenants have a tendency to cause considerable damage to property and building insurance can cover the cost of repairs. One can also include legal and maintenance cover under this kind of insurance. In order for the tenant to be covered against theft and other eventualities, they have to take out their own insurance.

Then there is builders risk insurance, this kind of insurance covers the building against damages whilst it is still under construction. That way, should a particularly vicious storm cause damage to your building before it has been completed, you do not have to pay for the repairs out of your own pocket.

There are many other types of building insurance available, which you decide to opt for is dependant entirely on what you intend to do with the building you are insuring. Older houses which have historical value will never be insured for their true value as this is inestimable. Insurance for this kind of home will only cover the actual cash value of the house, not the replacement value. Building insurance for a commercial building varies according to what use the building is put. A shopping centre will need very different building cover than a warehouse, for example, will require.

The general idea is to ensure that you are able to rebuild you building in case of it being damaged by any cause whatsoever, within reason of course, without costing you, the owner, very much. The more risks your building faces, the more you will pay in insurance premiums and the higher your excess will be. As with most insurance policies, it is often possible to tailor the policy to your needs.

About the Author

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Good Archiving is Essential When Some Types of Building Insurance Claims Go On for Years

Article by Alison Withers









Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

Home insurance claims sometimes take several years to resolve once and for all. The key organisation most customers will deal with is the Loss Adjustor, so their record archiving and efficiency is crucial.

The loss adjustor is the co-ordinating link between the issuers of a home insurance policy, the customer, the contractors who will make repairs and anyone else who might be liable for the damage that has been caused.

So it’s quite likely that the loss adjusting company dealing with the claim will have to keep records on file for a number of years, and that usually means archiving documents in a storage facility away from the company offices.

Archiving in a secure storage facility with 24-hour access is obviously a more cost-effective solution than eating up acres of expensive office space, but it needs to be done properly to be effective.

In one case we know of, where a tree on public land owned by a local council caused subsidence damage to a nearby home, it’s taken seven years for the situation to be addressed and is likely to be another two years before everything is finally resolved.

In this particular case once a year of investigations had established the cause of the cracks in the house walls, a schedule of works was prepared and builders moved in for three months to repair the damage, put in measures to prevent it happening again and make good.

The owners of the tree refused to fell it, though did cut it back, and were supposed to prune it regularly to prevent a recurrence of the problem. They didn’t, however, and small cracks started reappearing in the same places in the house.

The loss adjustors had assured the home owner that the file could be re-opened if this happened, and the home owner contacted them once it did.

This was when the problems started, because the company took nearly a year to finally locate the files that had been “archived” under the wrong name and with an incorrect phone number!

In the meantime, unfortunately, the loss adjusting company had also set up a new division to deal with this kind of case, with the result that a new representative had to be supplied with and get familiar with all the history and paperwork, by now several inches thick!

It would have been much more efficient if the company had used a labelling system when storing their archived files that made it easy for to access them even if the staff involved changed in the meantime.

Archive storage companies offer a range of space options so companies like our loss adjustors can be sure they have affordable space and easy access to their files.

But their efficiency was compromised because they plainly hadn’t made sure they had an effective system for identifying and labelling files, and from the sound of things the storage facility was not within easy access of the office.

Archiving in a local self store facility doule have made a huge difference to efficiency in dealing with the customer’s claim and saved a lot of anguish and phone calls.

Good self-store archiving facilities generally have experienced staff who can advise how best to store documents and give easy access around the clock.

One company we know of advises its customers to make two lists of the archived documents, leaving one with the storage company and keeping one at the customers’ offices.

It can save a lot of time and trouble all round.



About the Author

Writer Ali Withers argues that if files are being archived in a storage facility away from the offices efficient file archiving and labelling by the loss adjustors (the main link between customer, insurer and any contractors) is crucial when an insurance claim, particularly on damage to someone’s home, can take years to resolve.http://www.homestore.me.uk/index.php/self-storage/corporate-storage