Special Types of Insurance

We’ve all heard of car, health, life, and home insurance, but the insurance world has a lot more to offer. We’ll explain a few specialty types of insurance here.

Long-Term Care Insurance

One type of specialty Florida insurance is long-term care. As Americans live longer and longer, more elderly citizens are finding themselves in need of assistance with the activities of daily living (eating, bathing, dressing, etc.) due to old age or mental or physical illness. A long-term care insurance policy will help you pay for these services should you need them in the future. Some Florida life insurance policies have long-term care provisions that allow you to use a portion of your policy’s death benefits for long-term care purposes if you wish. The downside of this is that it does diminish the proceeds of the policy that your beneficiaries will receive. If you want to avoid this, you can purchase a standalone long-term care policy.

Disability Insurance

If you were to become temporarily or permanently disabled, you could stand to lose substantial income unless you have disability insurance. This type of Florida insurance pays an injured policyholder income when he/she is unable to work due to an injury or illness. There are two primary types of disability insurance: short-term disability and long-term disability. Short-term policies have a waiting period of 0-14 days and a maximum benefit period of two years. Long-term policies have waiting periods that range from a few weeks to several months and have maximum benefit periods of a few years to life.

Flood Insurance

Typical Florida insurance for homeowners does not cover flood damage, so you would need to invest in a policy separately to protect yourself from this kind of damage. Flood insurance is especially important in Florida because it is prone to hurricanes that can quickly bring devastating floods. You can get flood insurance from the government that covers up to $250,000 for the structure of your home and up to $100,000 for your possessions. Keep in mind that government flood insurance provides replacement value coverage for the structure of your home, but only actual cash value coverage for your possessions. Actual cash value coverage factors in the depreciation of your belongings over time.

Motorcycle Insurance

Just like car insurance, certain levels of motorcycle insurance are required to drive legally in the state of Florida. This type of Florida insurance protects your motorcycle in the event of collision and provides liability protection in the event that you damage or injure another party. As with auto insurance, you can also purchase comprehensive coverage on your motorcycle insurance, which will protect your bike from theft, vandalism, fire, etc. Florida motorcycle insurance tends to be a bit cheaper than auto insurance in general.