The last few years have been turbulent. With current affairs and a health pandemic to contend with, many of us scrambled to find ways to protect ourselves financially. The urgency of having to keep our homes, belongings, and loved ones secure, meant having to set up plans without properly researching their benefits, cover, or costs. Finding the cheapest premium or the most preferred insurance broker was not the priority ‒ financial protection was.
You may have quickly added policies, ignoring the stringent terms and exorbitant premiums to ensure you were covered completely. But as the world returns to some sort of normalcy, you may find yourself in a financially strained situation looking for ways to curb back on your expenses or even help you find new ways to save.
Here are some important reasons why you need to assess your insurance urgently.
Inadequate Cover
You may be stretching your finances to make ends meet; unsurprisingly, it seems to be a reality in which many of us find ourselves. Yet, even with the additional stress, insurance remains a priority to you. However, taking out insurance in a hurry with little to no research done to cover the costs, you may find yourself wasting your money with no protection.
Without having read the terms thoroughly and compared quotations by different providers, you did not have an opportunity to secure your life and home adequately. And when putting through claims, you may find yourself paying out of pocket due to them being rejected. Not knowing exactly what you have been covered for can become a problem when you need your insurance the most.
Updated Lifestyle
Prior to taking out insurance, you may have lived in a large, four-bedroom home in a small town. But with current economic conditions, you may have had to move closer to work and downsize to an apartment. Perhaps, you may have decided recently to install tracking systems on your vehicles to reduce the risk of theft or fitted a home surveillance system to add a layer of security to your property.
These are just some examples, but lifestyle changes do happen and can affect your cover as well as your premiums. If you have not reviewed your cover, you may be paying higher costs than you should be, considering new determining factors. Overinsured policies can be financially tough to pay for when on a tighter budget, and underinsured cover may have gaps.
Reduced Financial Security
You may have taken a pay cut at work, which has had a domino effect on the rest of your finances. Informing your provider of your salary decrease is important. It allows providers to assess their cover and benefits from their side too. It also gives them an opportunity to offer you a revised insurance solution. While you look for ways to reduce your spending, failing to review your insurance can be a costly mistake. Although your income can fluctuate annually, it is essential that you evaluate your costs and cover them after rushing into setting up plans.
Correlate With Your Needs
When you initially took out your insurance plan, it may have been under duress to protect your family. But as time has gone by, your needs have likely evolved or decreased, and your insurance should reflect this too. For example, you may have had a child during the period or planning retirement soon; these can change the cover you require. It is also worth assessing your plan for future financial goals. You need a provider that will provide you with solutions that correlate with your future too.
Conclusion
While insurance mitigates the impact of unexpected risks and is especially important today, it requires a more detailed evaluation than taking the first quotation you receive. It also requires continuous review thereafter. But with many of us feeling out options in recent years, we may be paying top dollar for coverage that does not fit our budgets, lifestyles, or needs. And while it is always advised to review your coverage annually, you may not have prioritized this recently.
Insurance should adapt to your current situation, but it should not be an “easy-fit” product that can be applied to every client. Before dismissing the importance of reviewing your insurance, you need to understand why it has financial implications for now and the future. It needs to be completely tailored to you.
Contact us at Prosperity QB for professional insurance services to help you evaluate the type of cover you need with a customized solution designed specifically for you.
