Dos and don’ts for marine insurance
If your business involves shipping goods locally or abroad, either inland or across the ocean, you must realize that the moment those goods walk out the door, they change hands many, many times. , and it is not known what may happen.
To protect your assets and your business, you need to have marine insurance. But how do you choose the right one? Here are some pros and cons:
NOT TO DO
1. Don’t confuse marine insurance with boat insurance. Boat insurance protects watercraft and their passengers. It’s like car insurance, except the car floats on water.
Marine insurance is a completely different banana. Despite its name, it is not limited to protecting the water load. It also protects the cargo transported on land, as well as protecting the vessel carrying the cargo.
This is why there is such a thing as “dry” maritime, for cargo transported by land, as well as “wet” maritime, for cargo shipped via real ships.
2. Do not get bound in your application form. Also, do not hide relevant information. There is a fine line between the two: lying on your form means that you deliberately entered incorrect information. Hiding information means that you were not required to disclose the information, but you know that disclosing it would have adversely affected your policy.
Either way, if it is found that you lied or withheld relevant information, you will most likely void your policy, defeating the purpose for which you obtained the insurance in the first place.
3. Do not break your warranty. In insurance law, a guarantee is essential for the performance of the contract. If it is breached, the non-breaching party may terminate the contract in addition to claiming damages.
A common implied warranty in marine insurance is the seaworthiness (or viability of the road) of the vessel.
Note that if a guarantee is breached, it will not help the insured to remedy the guarantee; the policy will be null and void regardless.
Therefore, before purchasing a policy, make sure that you know all the guarantees included and that you do not breach any of them. Which brings us to our first do …
behind
1. Read the fine print. While fine print can be tedious to read, we all know some through a painful experience, ignoring it is like parking under a construction site – it’s only a matter of time before something hard and heavy hits you on the head. , and you may not live to regret it.
The fact is, unless you’re a first grader learning to read, it won’t take you five minutes to read the details of the contract you’re making. (It doesn’t matter if it feels like an hour, it actually isn’t.)
The fine print will tell you the details of what you are paying for, what rights you may have that you may not have been informed of, and what conditions are not covered by your policy, and what actions will void and void your policy. . For example, improperly packaged cargo is often not covered. Neither are dangerous items like fuel, firearms, and chemicals. Others may not cover food, wood, and animals. There may also be boating limits that, if exceeded, will void your policy.
2. Compare policy offers. And don’t just rely on price.
Perhaps the reason that policy is so cheap is because it only covers the actual value, which is the value of your insured item at the time it was lost, and this includes depreciation, so you will probably end up getting much less than what i expected. expected.
On the other hand, that other policy may cost more, but it insures your item for the amount you had agreed (agreed value), on paper, so when the item is lost, you are compensated for the exact amount you expect. , allowing you to immediately replace the lost item with a new one.
What about the causes of loss covered by the policy? Non-filed policies only cover specific types of losses and may not cover acts of God. On the other hand, maybe they will.
Read the fine print to find out exactly what you are paying for. Just because it’s the cheapest marine insurance politics does not mean it is the best. And if you are in business, you should know that you should only invest in the best or suffer losses later.