Property insurance – types of property insurance policies
In the group of insurance, you can find various types of offers that cover people or property. If the subject of protection is the client’s property, then we are dealing with property insurance. What are they?
Insurance can be divided into several groups. What are the types of insurance in Poland? Depending on the chosen criterion, we can distinguish:
property and personal insurance,
Compulsory and voluntary insurance,
Motor and travel insurance,
Insurance for private and corporate clients,
social and economic insurance.
These are just some of the many types of insurance in Poland that customers can take advantage of. Do they do it? Property and personal insurance is very popular, but most of our customers use the obligatory insurance, such as MTPL. Deloitte’s report shows that Poles unfortunately insure themselves quite rarely in comparison with inhabitants of other European countries. Only Slovaks, Hungarians, Croats and Romanians scored worse than Poles in terms of insurance coverage. However, Poles are far behind the leaders of the ranking – representatives of France, Netherlands and Finland. Almost every owner of a vehicle concludes a third party insurance contract, but there are also other types of car insurance, such as autocasco, which statistically every fourth car owner chooses.
The Polish Insurance Association presents a slightly different classification of the insurance market in Poland. According to it, insurance is divided into two basic groups:
life insurance,
property insurance and some personal insurance.
Let’s focus on property insurance. Their different types make it possible for each potential client to choose the right scope of protection for himself and his property.
PROPERTY INSURANCE
What is property insurance? Its definition can be found in the Civil Code. According to article 821 the subject of such protection can be any property interest that is not contrary to law and can be assessed in monetary value. As a rule, the subject of such insurance is property owned by a person, such as a house, an apartment, a car or a trip. Therefore, we can list such property insurance as:
property insurance – house or apartment,
motor insurance – such as OC or AC,
travel insurance.
Property insurance consists of several important elements. The policy must specify such issues as:
The object covered – e.g. a car, a tourist trip, the whole property together with the movables in it or the walls of a building or its fixed elements.
Scope of protection – property insurance may protect against fortuitous events, including third parties’ activities, as well as damages resulting from natural forces.
Sum insured – the upper limit of the insurer’s liability.
Exclusions of liability – situations in which the insurance company refuses to pay compensation.
Deductible – indicates the limits of the insurance company’s liability and may limit the customer’s claims.
The primary purpose for which property insurance is purchased is to financially compensate the client for losses incurred. The amount of compensation depends on the extent of the loss and the sum insured.
PROPERTY INSURANCE – EXAMPLES
We already know what property insurance is. Let’s now check how the property insurance market looks like in Poland and what types of such policies exist in our country. Insurance of houses and apartments are usually offers that concern protection of the biggest property of the policyholder – real estate. It is not at all said that with mortgage loan such insurance is obligatory. The bank is not the entity that could force the borrower to buy such protection, but it has the right to make the granting of a mortgage conditional on the decision to take out such a policy.
A type of property insurance is business property insurance, which is offered to entrepreneurs and protects, for example, their office buildings or production plants. Another type is tourist insurance, which protects luggage, electronic and sports equipment, and cancellation of a tourist event. A wide group of property insurance is represented by motor vehicle insurance, including in particular obligatory third party liability (OC) for motor vehicle owners and voluntary AC insurance.
