Welcome to today’s episode of The Murray Group Mailbag, where we answer your questions about home insurance and flood insurance. Today’s question comes from Stephanie from Glenmont, NY and Stephanie asks:
What is the difference between flood insurance and water-backup coverage?
Watch the video below or read the video’s transcript if you don’t have the capability of watching the video. If you’d like to submit your own question, you can do so in the comment section below this post, on our Facebook page or you can email us at insurance@murraygrp.com.
What is the difference between flood insurance and water-backup coverage?
Watch this short video to get the whole answer.
Video Transcript:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Murray Group Mailbag. My name is Ryan Hanley. I’m the director of marketing and sales here at the Murray Group. And the Murray Group Group Mail Bag is very simple feature. Basically, we get questions submitted to us all day through our website, through our Facebook page and through email about insurance related matters and we know that if one person has a question for sure many more people do as well and we wanna make that information easily available and completely free, so we post these videos on youtube and on our web site to make sure that if you have a question, it gets answered.
Today’s question comes from Stephanie, who likes in Glenmont, NY, and she asks, What is the difference between flood insurance and water back up coverage. OK. Very common question, especially in the fall and in the spring in our particular area which is the general Albany area, but really anywhere in upstate New York during the fall and spring.
Flooding happens, water accumulates in places that it normally doesn’t And can impact our homes,. So flood insurance is actually a policy run through the federal government and in order for a flood policy to respond. There has to be two properties impacted, or more than two acres impacted, and the national government, the Federal government actually has to declare the area, you know a flood in order for the flood policy to respond.
So you could have flood insurance have water damage based on something that you would consider a flood, and if the federal government doesn’t deem that it meets the criteria of a flood, that policy will not not respond. But when thinking about what a flood is, and how flood impacts your home. Think water, over your foundation down into your house.
not the best way, not a completely accurate way to describe it but kind of gives you a visualization, flood has to impact a large area like I said more then two acres or more then two properties and it has to, you know, normally comes over the foundation and down into the house. Water back up coverage is actually an endorsement to your home owner’s policy.
So where flood insurance is a completely separate policy from your homeowners insurance. Flood is not covered, repeat, not covered on your homeowners policy. Water back up is actually an endorsement to your homeowner’s insurance policy. Very inexpensive. You know, you can get water backup coverage for no 30, 40 bucks at it’s lowest level, and then obviously you can add more with most carriers, but water backup coverage provides reimbursement in the event that water backs up through sewers, pipes drains, sump pump.
So, sump pump failure is part of water backup coverage. So really when you think about a claim that would involve water backup, think about water coming back up into your home. So you leave for vacation, your sump pump fails while you’re away, and there’s two inches of water in your basement when you come home.
The clean up, any damage property down there, that’s all going to be covered under water back up. Now, water back up coverage, as an endorsement, often has a reduced limit so it’s not like if you have $100,000 worth of contents coverage, on your water backup or on your homeowner’s policy if you have the water backup endorsement, you’re going to get a $100,000 worth of reimbursement.
You wanna make sure that you know and are comfortable with the limit of water backup coverage. But these are two very separate things. Water backup endorsement to the homeowner’s policy, flood insurance completely separate policy but you wanna make sure that if you feel like you could be impacted by a flood or water-related issues that you’re speaking to your insurance agent about this very important and your insurance agent will help you determine which policy and which endorsements are right for you.
So again, this has been the Murray Group Mailbag you have your own question that you would like to be featured here, you can leave it in the comments below this video, or you can search us out on Facebook The Murray Group search that in Facebook, and you’ll find us. Or you can send us a direct email insurance@MurrayGRP.com, that’s insurance @murraygrp.com, and we’ll make sure that we get your question featured on a future episode of the Murray Group Mailbag.
Thank you.
This video is part of an ongoing series dedicated to helping consumers get answers to their insurance questions.
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If you have questions about your insurance program or if you would like to receive a proposal for auto or home insurance coverage, please give us a call at 518-777-7777 or email us at insurance@murraygrp.com. You can also click here to contact us through our website.
We’re here to help you find peace of mind.
Thank you and good luck,
Ryan Hanley, CIC
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