What Is Property Loss Insurance?

Property loss insurance protects you from damage and theft to physical assets, including buildings and equipment. Property loss insurance for business will also cover such things as patents, accounts receivable, and licenses.

How Much Property Loss Insurance Should I Buy?

It is important to arrange the right level of property loss insurance. To do this, you must know your rights and obligations as an owner, a tenant, leaseholder, landlord or mortgage holder. You must also take into account the local bylaws on standards for physical repair and reconstruction.

Filing a Property Loss Claim:

To file a claim, a claims representative must inspect the property and determine the cause the loss. If a person was the cause or contributed to the loss, then a claims representative must determine your legal right to collect money for the damages. This is called 'the act of subrogating.'

The next thing that must happen is to determine the value of the property as well as the amount of the damage. The cost to restore replaced the item will be used as a basis for valuation. Since depreciation is taken into account, you may or may not get a new item to replace your property. In the case of a business, incidental losses such as the loss of, or business interruption will be taken into account to reach a settlement.

Depending on the terms of the policy, you may receive a less than what you actually lost.

The last step is that a proof of loss settlement for the insurance liability is presented to the client, and then there is a settlement.

The state of Oregon has developed a property loss database template in Microsoft Access. If you would like a copy of the database to track your losses, contact the Risk Management Division at 503-373-7475. There are two versions of the template: Microsoft Access 2000 or Access 1997. You may also download the Access 2000 template at http://egov.oregon.gov/DAS/SSD/Risk/docs/RMDdatabasetemplate.zip.