Personal Insurance

Personal insurance, as opposed to commercial or business insurance, refers to insurance policies and products meant for individuals or families. This encompasses a whole host of insurance products like automobile insurance, valuables insurance, home insurance, helper insurance, travel insurance, health insurance, life insurance, etc.

Personal insurance is an important piece of the financial picture that offers financial protection and peace of mind. To that end, we offer a wide variety of personal insurance products to help our customers manage risk.

Personal insurance is just one piece of a holistic risk management portfolio to give you confidence and peace of mind as you go about your day.

There are a variety of personal insurance products including automobile insurance, valuables insurance, home insurance, fire insurance, helper insurance, travel insurance, etc. These different products are meant to be used in combination as needed to ensure that individuals and families are protected from financial risk where possible.

For example, a typical family might have a car, a home, a domestic helper, and would go on a family vacation once a year. In this example, they would need a variety of personal insurance products used in combination to cover all of their exposures.

To protect the vehicle, its occupants and others from injuries, they would need automobile insurance. To ensure that their largest investment – their home – is protected, they would need homeowners insurance. If they have valuables like expensive watches or jewellery, they would need valuables insurance. Under the Employees’ Compensation Ordinance in Hong Kong, they would need insurance to cover their domestic helper as well for any injuries sustained while on the job. When they go on their annual vacation, they would also need travel insurance for the whole family in case they get sick or injured in another country.

To determine the types of coverage you would need, contact a licensed Trusted Union insurance advisor to do a deep dive into your unique situation.

Personal injury occurs when a person suffers bodily injury or death because of some accident. On top of that, personal injury is not restricted to physical injury – any psychological damage or mental distress is also considered personal injury. Personal injuries can be very serious things leading to permanent disability, financial issues and even death. If someone suffered a personal injury as a result of your actions or inactions, you could be sued and found liable (responsible) in court.

Personal liability is liability incurred by individual(s) rather than a business. It is liability that arises out of private activities rather than commercial ones. For example, if you invite some friends over to your home for dinner and one of them slips on a poorly nailed down carpet and injures themselves, that would be a case of personal liability as you are personally responsible. On the other hand, if a customer came into your store and tripped on a similarly poorly secured carpet and injured themselves, which would be an example of commercial liability.

Someone suing for personal injury would be seeking to recover money to compensate them for medical payments, mental distress or disfigurement, loss of future or current earnings, and a whole host of other things. To protect yourself against this type of claim and to ensure you’re able to provide fair compensation to the plaintiff, you should carry personal liability insurance.

How much your health insurance premiums would cost you depends on many factors and varies from insurance company to insurance company – even for the same person. Insurance companies have their own proprietary rate setting methodology but generally speaking, insurers look at a few things when trying to determine your premiums:

• Age:

  premiums are significantly higher for older people compared to younger people. This is because older people are more likely to get sick and make claims against the policy that the insurer will have to pay out on.

• Location:

  where you live has a big impact on claims costs. Medical care in certain places is more expensive than others (i.e. in the United States of America) and cost of living can be higher as well.

• Tobacco Use:

  For obvious reasons, smokers can also expect to pay significantly more than non-smokers.

• Type of Coverage:

  If you choose a more comprehensive plan or add dental onto your health insurance, it will naturally be more expensive to compensate for high claims costs to be paid by the insurer.

To get the most accurate quote for personal health insurance, contact us and we can help you complete an application form. There is no obligation or strings attached and if you do decide to purchase a policy with Trusted Union, we will do our best to secure the lowest rate possible for you.

Personal liability insurance in Hong Kong is designed to protect you against any unexpected claims alleging personal injury or property damage due to your negligence. This includes other miscellaneous actions like defamation or mental anguish.

More importantly, there is worldwide coverage for this type of insurance, so you’re protected no matter where you go but there is no coverage for liability arising out of business activities.

Some examples of things that would be covered include:

• If you’re hosting a dinner party at your home and a guest slips on some water that you spilled. If they received a serious back or head injury, they could sue you. Luckily, your personal liability insurance policy would cover that.

• If you’re on family vacation and one of your children accidentally damages the antique lamp in the hotel room, the hotel could sue to try to recover damages. If you have personal liability insurance, your policy would cover it as coverage is global.

• If you accidentally hit someone with a ball on the golf course.

• If your dog accidentally bites your neighbour.

• If your child accidentally injures a classmate at school.

• If your child accidentally and unfairly disparages a local business on social media.

If you’re sued for any of these things, and more, you could be held personally liable – meaning your home and other assets could be at risk. Personal liability insurance should be used to protect yourself.

No matter where you are in the world, accidents and illnesses can happen leading to bodily injury or financial strain. And the tough part is, they usually happen when they’re least expected. So how do you make sure you’re protected from the financial fallout that these accidents can cause? By purchasing a personal accident insurance policy.

Many policies will have a discovery period of 2 years. If any information on the application is found to be purposefully inaccurate during this time, your coverage can be denied.

Personal accident insurance policies will pay you a lump sum if you are permanently disabled or die as the result of an accident. This money comes with no strings attached for you to use as you please. Many people use it to pay for medical bills, income replacement if you’re unable to work, or as a lump sum benefit left to your surviving dependants. Some policies will also have extra coverage income replacement while you’re in hospital.

There are different types of personal accident insurance including some that offer coverage even while you’re abroad (sort of like travel insurance). Other ancillary coverages commonly offered include reimbursement if your wallet of handbag is stolen while in a foreign country, or payment of a sum of money that can be used for emergency purposes in a foreign country or to replace the important documents stolen along with your wallet or handbag.

While these policies generally won’t cover injuries resulting from participation in a dangerous professional sport, some will offer coverage for dangerous amateur sports. That said, we specialize in helping clients find insurance no matter who they are so get in touch with us. We’re confident we can help you.

A personal injury is when a person suffers bodily injuries or psychological damage as the result of an accident. In line with the seriousness of such injuries, damages awarded by courts in personal injury lawsuits are very high. To protect yourself against this, people should consider having some sort of personal injury insurance in place.

Luckily, most people already do. When most people think about homeowners insurance, they think about the coverage the policy provides if their home or personal property (i.e. television, jewellery, handbags, furniture, etc.) are damaged. While this is all very important and is the primary reason for purchasing homeowners insurance, the personal liability coverage that comes with it shouldn’t be overlooked.

The personal liability section of your homeowners policy will pay for damages the court orders you to pay the plaintiff as well as any trial costs and legal fees incurred in the process. This coverage pays for liability arising out of personal (non-business) activities on a world-wide basis. That means if you accidentally drop something out of a hotel window while on vacation and hit someone in the head, you would still have the same coverage you would if a guest slipped and fell in your home back in Hong Kong.

Generally speaking, we all have a legal duty to exercise due care in our conduct towards others when doing an activity that may cause harm to others (i.e. while driving). If you’re doing something that has the potential to cause property damage or bodily injury to 3rd parties, you have a general legal duty to exercise reasonable care in your performance of that activity. If you don’t and you cause harm to a 3rd party, they can sue and if you were found liable, you would need to pay damages. Depending on the extent of the injury or property damage and the skill of the plaintiff’s lawyer, these amounts can be hugely damaging to your personal finances.

Personal liability insurance, as the name implies, insures liability arising out of personal (aka. non-business) activities. The main purpose of a personal liability policy is to pay for any damages the court orders you to pay the person you’ve harmed.

Another often overlooked coverage provided by most liability insurance policies is coverage for defense costs. Because your insurer will be paying damages if you lose, they clearly have a vested interest in your legal defense. As a result, they will be hiring and paying for a lawyer to help defend you. As legal fees charged by a competent lawyer can be astronomical, this often overlooked coverage section is worth more than your insurance broker’s weight in gold.

This liability extends to include liability from activities done by the insured themselves or by others acting on the insured’s behalf (i.e. your domestic helper). For example, if your domestic helper accidentally dropped something out of the window while cleaning your apartment, you would be held vicariously liable for the actions of your “employee” and your personal liability insurance would step in to provide coverage.

Yes, you can have as many insurance policies as you want and there’s nothing stopping you from having more than one. That said, if you do end up purchasing multiple insurance policies, the insurance company might have some additional questions for you regarding why you would want so many.

A common situation which leads to people having multiple policies is if there is one provided through their workplace (i.e. if your employer offers group benefits or group health insurance) and you want to get a personal individual health insurance policy in order to get better coverage.

But just because you have 2 health insurance policies does not mean you necessarily have twice the coverage. Usually, health insurance policies only pay in excess of any other coverage or compensation you have. The trouble comes when determining which insurance policy is primarily responsible for paying the claim. If both policies are considered primary, then they would share the costs of the claim proportionally. This means that even though it’s possible for you to get more than one health insurance policy, it’s not always the best decision unless you have a specific plan in place.

Yes you can. You can take out a life insurance policy on another person as long as you have some kind of insurable interest in their life.

To have insurable interest in someone’s life means that you would suffer financially if that person’s life were to end – examples of people with insurable interest in your life could include your employer (if you have special skills, relationships or play a key role in their business, they could suffer a financial loss if you were to become dead or disabled), your spouse or your children (if you are the primary breadwinner in the family providing most of the household’s income), or any other dependent relatives.

Common examples would be a spouse taking out a policy on their spouse’s life, a dependent taking a policy out on their parent’s life, or even a business taking a life insurance policy out on a key executive or employee (this is sometimes called Key Man Insurance and is an important part of many knowledge or relationship based businesses). Sometimes, a business may also take out a life insurance policy on the founder’s life.

When insurance companies look to set pricing for certain things, they look at many factors that could influence the risk or the potential for a loss to occur. During this process, they would look for factors relating to the thing being insured and the person seeking insurance.

Using automobile insurance as an example, they might look at the make, model and year of your vehicle. Different cars represent different levels of risk. For example, a sports car is more likely to get into a serious accident compared to a regular passenger vehicle. A more expensive car is also more expensive to repair which means you’ll need to pay more for insurance. If you have modifications on your car related to racing or sound systems, that would make it higher risk of crashing, theft and also more expensive to repair in case of a loss.

Now looking at the applicant for car insurance, the experience of the driver and their accident safety record plays a big part in setting prices. A young driver under 25 years old is more likely to have little or no driving history for the insurance company to base their decisions off and would be automatically be considered high risk because of their young age and relative inexperience. For this reason, even though it might not be entirely fair, younger applicants typically pay more for insurance than older applicants.