Do you and your betrothed take this insurance policy …

Fri Jan 24th, 2014 on     Insurance Claims,    

As we have said time and time again, insurance is all about risk. In some circles, “risk” is merely code for “gambling,” but the industry shies away from using the latter for some fairly obvious reasons. Imagine, for example, that your insurance agent asks you how much you’d like to bet that your teenager will crash the car or your neighbor will break a leg on your front steps. Risk is a much more palatable word.

For insurance companies, there is risk in everything we do. What they have to figure out is whether it will be profitable to convince consumers that the risk is too great to ignore. If you don’t buy insurance … you could lose your house, you kid could lose his driver’s license, you could pay for a trip you never get to take. Choose A, B, C or “other.” The insurer’s argument is, if you can’t live with the potential loss hanging over your head, you should buy insurance.

What about your wedding?

Weddings are big business these days. In this country, the average wedding runs at about $25,000. If the cake is wrong or a tornado levels the reception hall — or, here in Florida, a hurricane — what will happen to your deposit?

Insurance companies come to the rescue by offering wedding coverage. And it’s not a new concept, either: The first wedding policy was written in 1993.

Not every insurance company offers wedding insurance, but many of the major carriers do. They wouldn’t keep offering it if consumers weren’t buying it.

Consumers might not have kept buying the coverage, though, if no one ever needed it. One woman purchased insurance for her daughter’s destination wedding to a hurricane-prone city. While the hurricane never showed, neither did the limousine. The insurance covered the deposit with the limo company.

According to Travelers, more than half of wedding insurance claims related to the photographer or videographer. Caterers came in second, with 21 percent of claims. Eleven percent of claims were about the disc jockey, and 5 percent the wedding planner.

The data is from 2012; 2013 data is not yet available. Nor, apparently, is a breakdown by state. It would be interesting to see if Florida couples and their families were a little more laid back than people outside of the Sunshine State.

Source: Business Insurance, “Couples say ‘I do’ to wedding insurance,” Jan. 21, 2014

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