I talked to my insurance agent (Liberty Mutual) 3 weeks ago about it when I received my AIAT. He is also a personal friend of mine. He warned against putting guns, jewelery or any type of item that would be a "questionable" claim on my home owners insurance and recommended me getting a seperate plan from a different insurance company. He said that if I were to make a claim on a gun or my wifes wedding ring, my home owners would sky rocket. nHe said if I made a $10K claim, that my insurance would go up so much that within 2-3 years, I would pay for that 10K claim with my insurance hike. I also have my vehicle insurance through them and he said that if I do not have the guns insured and a gun were stolen out of my car, they would only cover $2k Max. Same thing for a house fire and my guns were destroyed... 2K max. And that is not per gun. That is for all of my guns!
I will get insurance for my guns but I will NOT get it through my home owners.
This really makes me wonder why we even pay for insurance. To me, insurance is like a legal way of robbing people. They are betting that you never file a claim so in effect for years you are giving them money for no return and often times when/if you do have a claim they will low ball you, not pay out, or pay out and hike your premiums so hight to make up for what they gave you. Its almost like a scam. I mean sure if you need hundreds of thousands of dollars that you don't have then its great to have. I don't know I am just conflicted about the whole deal.
Look at it like this, if they charged you say $600 a year to protect x amount of Dan's $10,000 worth of firearms for the next 30 years then you have paid them $18,000. Dan never files a claim and decides to sell. They have made an $8000 profit from doing nothing. if 9 other people do this then they have made $180,000 and so on.
Ok, now take the same scenario but this time Dan makes a $10,000 claim, they pay out $7000 because of some rule they claim that they do not have to pay the full amount. Dan has been paying for his insurance as well as the other 9 people mentioned for 5 years at this point. Dan has paid into it $3000 at this point for coverage. So, they make $30,000 from premiums over 5 years and now Dan makes a claim in which they pay out $7,000 so they are still $23,000 in the good. Now since they made the pay out Dan's premium for the same amount of coverage doubles over the next 5 years while everyone else's stays the same. Dan at this point has paid $6000 back into the system out of his own pocket, which means he basically could have covered his own loss here and the insurance company is only out $1000. So, this entire time they have made $30,000 in 5 years, minus one $7000 claim, which drops them to a profit of $23,000 at this point, then Dan's premium goes up to where he pays $1200 for the next 5 years while the other 9 stay the same, this nets the insurance company a profit of $33,000 for that 5 year span. So, in 10 years they made $56,000 profit while only paying out one $4000 in claims from this group while Dan has learned that if he had not paid the insurance company all those years he could have basically covered his on claim and not had to pay double the premiums the next 5 years. You see where I am going here? For a lot of people its a wash and you might as well be giving money away. However, I will say when you need it for big pay outs and you don't have it you will wish you did.
Oh, and this is assuming that they keep everyone's rate the same. Often times after a claim, they raise everyone's monthly premiums by a specific amount which basically insures that they never have a loss. And, this is just 10 people, a very small sampling of the pool most insurance companies have.
