Most policies make you pay extra for critical protection. Others only protect against specific loss types. With Square One, you get comprehensive coverage that protects against major loss types including break-ins and burst pipes. Plus, the policies offered by Square One automatically include:
Most customers also qualify for earthquake insurance and inland flood insurance. And, house owners also receive guaranteed building replacement cost coverage as well as unlimited protection for additional costs incurred due to building code changes.
Sadly, the insurance industry has a bad reputation. Many people think that insurance companies try to find ways to deny claims. In reality, most people simply don’t have the critical protection they need. Traditional insurance providers most commonly offer the following three types of home insurance policies:
Named perils: |
These policies specify the types of loss that you’re protected against. Typically, this includes fire or lightning, explosion, smoke, falling objects, impact by aircraft or land vehicle, riot, vandalism or malicious acts, some types of water damage, windstorm or hail, and theft or attempted theft. Unless you suffer loss or damage to your home or personal property from one of the specified types of loss, you’re not protected. |
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Comprehensive: |
On the other end of the spectrum are comprehensive policies, which are also referred to as all-risk policies. These policies protect you against all types of loss except those specifically excluded. Loss or damage due to wear and tear, snowslide or landslide, acts of terrorism, and war are some examples of the types of loss typically excluded in comprehensive policies. Even with the exclusions, comprehensive policies provide you with the best protection and you shouldn’t settle for less. |
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Broad form: |
The best way to describe broad form policies is that they provide comprehensive protection on your home and named perils protection on your personal property. While this may seem like an interesting idea, it’s actually quite silly. Let’s say you’re painting your family room and accidentally drop your TV while moving it. With a broad form policy, any damage to your hardwood floors would be covered, but damage to your TV would not. |
It’s confusing, right? Be sure to check that you actually have comprehensive protection with your policy. If you don’t, you’re not fully protected and will be disappointed if you have a claim.
Even if you have a comprehensive policy, you often need to specifically add and pay extra for critical protection you need. In fact, most traditional policies don’t automatically provide the broadest water protection available. They also don’t provide enough protection in the event that there are additional costs to rebuild your home to current building codes, which means you could be out of pocket for tens of thousands of dollars. In all cases, you have to pay extra to be fully protected.
When you buy a home insurance policy, you’re entering into a contract with your insurance company. In exchange for the premiums you pay, your insurance company commits to reimbursing you for loss or damage insured under the policy. If you have a named perils or broad form policy, you simply aren’t protected for all types of loss. Even if you have a comprehensive policy, you often need to specifically add and pay for critical protection.
Without the right policy, it’s very likely that your insurance company will have the unfortunate task of notifying you that your claim isn’t covered in spite of the fact that it could have been if you had the right policy. You might be thinking the insurance company should just pay your claim anyways. If they did that, it wouldn’t be fair to the people who updated their policies, bought the right protection, and paid the higher resulting premium.
At Square One, we do our best to ensure you have the right protection against all types of loss. We only offer one type of policy and it provides broad protection against all major types of loss. The table on this page demonstrates how our policy provides better protection than traditional policies. And, as protection for new types of loss become available, we’ll automatically include it to ensure you remain well protected.
Home insurance policies aim to provide protection against the most common losses, but they clearly can’t protect against every possible type of loss and remain affordable. As such, every policy has exclusions.
| Type of protection | Square One’s policy | Traditional comprehensive policy |
Traditional broad form policy |
Traditional named perils policy |
| Protection against all types of loss to buildings and detached structures | Included | Included | Included | Not available |
| Protection against all types of loss to personal and specialty property | Included | Included | Not available | Not available |
| Protection against earthquakes | Optional | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| Broad protection against water damage | Included | Optional | Optional | Optional |
| Protection against changes to building codes | Unlimited | Limited | Limited | Limited |