A properly built auto policy in the Hudson Valley starts with at least $250,000/$500,000/$250,000 in split liability limits, though we prefer $500CSL or $1MM CSL in combined single limit coverage. It also includes full Additional Personal Injury Protection, comprehensive and…
SUM stands for Supplementary Uninsured/Underinsured Motorists coverage. It pays for your injuries and your family’s injuries when the driver who hits you doesn’t have enough insurance, or has none at all. Every other coverage on your New York auto policy…
The three L’s decide when insurance is required. They don’t decide when you actually need it. Is insurance required in New York as often as people think? Not nearly. You want to drive your car, live in your house, run…
No. There’s no such policy for sale. No New York insurer offers anything called “full coverage,” and no combination of coverages covers everything that could go wrong. The phrase gets treated like a guarantee. It isn’t one, and treating it…
In our owner’s nearly 30 years as a licensed agent placing homeowners coverage with New York regional carriers, we’ve never personally seen it happen, and we’ve never seen a resulting lawsuit either. The lowball stories that make headlines are almost…
Because New York law generally prohibits insurers from pricing a policy for one individual in isolation. Insurers have to group similar drivers together and price by group, and a credit-based insurance score and geographic territory are two of the most…
An insurance score is a credit-based number insurers use to help decide whether to offer you a policy and what to charge for it, separate from your regular credit score. In New York, it’s tightly regulated. Insurers can’t use certain…
Most of the time, it’s not about you. New York insurers group similar drivers into rating tiers and price by tier, not just by individual driving record. Years of rising litigation costs, repair costs, and fraud have pushed premiums up…
No, not through what New York calls a surcharge. Under New York’s Regulation 100, codified at 11 NYCRR Part 169 and issued under New York Insurance Law Section 2334, surcharges are limited to accidents where you were found at fault,…
Yes, more often than the horror stories suggest, especially with the regional New York carriers we place most of our business with. The real risk isn’t a company looking for a reason to deny you. It’s a policy that was…
