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While property and casualty insurance spans many different insurance products, the main similarity is each protects you for casualty — also called liability — and property damage. You can even bundle some policies together if you have multiple insurance needs. However, each policy comes with specific features for the best coverage of each property type.
Also known as P&C, property and casualty insurance is a broad term that covers liability damage and property damage. You probably already have one common kind of property and casualty insurance — like home, renters or auto insurance.
Property insurance refers to any policy that protects against damage to your own property, like a home or car. Property damage can include theft, vandalism or weather damage from earthquakes, floods, fire, wind or hail.
Casualty insurance refers to any policy that pays liability expenses when you cause damage or injuries to someone else. Liability expenses can include medical bills, repairing or replacing property you damaged or legal fees for court cases.
Property and casualty insurance is an umbrella name for a variety of insurance products you might need, like home, renters or condo insurance. Those include:
As controversial as it sounds, pets are legally considered owned personal property. This may be problematic for pet owners who value their pets as part of the family, rather than an object or property. From an insurance standpoint, pet insurance functions like a combination of health insurance and property insurance, but it’s underwritten by property and casualty companies.
Although you’ll see a variety of property and casualty insurance out there, each type includes similar coverage. You can get protection for:
Yes, you can. Because property and casualty policies cover similar types of damage, many insurers provide several types of policies.
Most insurers offer multipolicy discounts up to 25% or more per policy for keeping more than one type of coverage with them. The most common bundles include car and home or renters insurance.
However, some insurers don’t offer coverage for specialty vehicles like ATVs or business insurance. You may need a separate insurer to cover those.
Insurance comes in handy in a number of scenarios, including these common situations:
After a severe hail storm, Jack and Lisa notice large dark spots on their roof’s shingles. Since wind and hail is included in their homeowners policy, their insurance covered the cost of replacing the shingles after a $1,000 deductible.
Samuel rear-ends another car while he was distracted when coming to a stop sign. Samuel’s car insurance covered the damage to the other driver’s car under property damage liability. It also paid for damage to Samuel’s car through collision coverage after a deductible.
Alison, the condo property manager, sends a notice to residents that severe water damage occurred in the condo’s shared lounge and hallways. Each resident is responsible for $800, a number the condo association based on costs not covered by the master insurance policy. Residents can file this cost with their personal condo policies under a type of coverage called loss assessments.
The home Rachel is renting out to tenants needs building updates to keep up with new local laws, and repairs will cost several thousand dollars. Since she opted for this coverage on her landlord insurance policy, she can cover the repairs and pay for income lost while she’s unable to rent out the home.
When a customer slips and falls on business property, Amy files a claim with her business insurance. Although the customer wanted to sue the business, Amy avoided the court case by using business liability coverage to pay the medical expenses up front.
Property and casualty insurance is a broad term that covers a variety of damage scenarios. Since property and casualty protects many types of property, you’ll have to research insurance policies that offer the protection you need.
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