Home owner's insurance for home reptile business?'s

My major question is which companies will sell home owner's insurance to someone who has a home based reptile business? My home ins. is pretty cheap (under $500 /yr), how much of an increase could I expect if I included the home based business? I will probably go LLC by the end of the year and will certainly have to have the insurance. Anyone have any tips?

My only input I can add is this: It is my understanding that basic homeowner's insurance does NOT cover living organisms. I know of a local guy who used to propagate $1000's of coral fragments, and when a fire destroyed 1/2 his home along with all of his high-tech aquariums and corals, the insurance company wouldn't cover the loss of the *live* things.

When my mom built a new home on a 40 acre plot, there was an existing old farmhouse that she turned into her exotic bird-breeding facility. (exotic birds to an insurance company = anything that's not poultry). Most insurance companies don't like to combine residences with businesses, but when she found one that would cover the entire property, the business part of the contract had to have a few specific clauses built in (along with $-values) for the actual living creatures. I'm not 100% sure what insurance company she had to go with, but I know it was a farmer-friendly one... Medina Mutal sounds familiar.

For what it's worth...

Thanks Paul. I have not mentioned nor was I asked if I had any pets when I bought my homeowner's policy. I have heard of people being denied or cancelled because they owned a snake! I can understand jacking rates for people who own dangerous animals that are known to cause death and destruction but if the owner can prove they are properly contained I don't see why insurance can't cover eople willing to pay. Hell, people with kids don't get rate jacked and they are the #1 reason people get sued by neighbors! I actually got that tidbit from my agent!

Heck Yeah, and can you THINK of anything more destructive than kids? And it's still against the law to keep them in cages.....

Sorry I don't have anything really helpful to add. But I'm also interested in this issue, and hoping others will post.

Originally Posted by hill4803

Thanks Paul. I have not mentioned nor was I asked if I had any pets when I bought my homeowner's policy. I have heard of people being denied or cancelled because they owned a snake! I can understand jacking rates for people who own dangerous animals that are known to cause death and destruction but if the owner can prove they are properly contained I don't see why insurance can't cover eople willing to pay. Hell, people with kids don't get rate jacked and they are the #1 reason people get sued by neighbors! I actually got that tidbit from my agent!

Snakes, however they are contained, are deemed 'wild animals' and owners can be strictly liable for harm caused.


http://www.suite101.com/content/stri...ty-law-a117277

I am a property & casualty insurance agent. I own an insurance agency in Texas. I also breed chameleons. I can tell you with 100% certainty. A standard home insurance policy in the state of Texas does not cover exotic pets. It also would not pay for any loss of income from a fire or other peril that destroyed said animals. You may be able to get the insurance company to pay for cages and other supplies that were destroyed. But if you are operating a breeding or wholsale business from the residence they may decide to decline all portions of that loss from the claim. Based on the fact that its a commercial enterprise.
If you want to be insured properly you need to take a detailed inventory of all the animals and supplies and have a detailed price listing the costs of all the items being insured. Take that to your agent and he/she can get you quotes on commercial property coverage. Then you would need to decide if you want to purchse general liability for your business. So that you would be covered if someone was somehow hurt by you while you were in the act of conducting business. Coverage for animal bites is outrageously expensive so you would probably exclude that or the company my MAKE YOU EXCLUDE it in order for them to accept the risk. The costs associated with commercial liability coverage are variable depending on the amt of coverage needed (ie 25,000 per occurence up to say 1 mill per occurrence). Also depends on what types of animals are going to be sold and displayed. If the animals will be transported to other facilities for expos and sales etc... All those things factor into a properly rated insurance policy. Which is basically a contract between you and the insurance company detailing what is covered and what isnt.

Originally Posted by Killer Chams

I am a property & casualty insurance agent. I own an insurance agency in Texas. I also breed chameleons. I can tell you with 100% certainty. A standard home insurance policy in the state of Texas does not cover exotic pets. It also would not pay for any loss of income from a fire or other peril that destroyed said animals. You may be able to get the insurance company to pay for cages and other supplies that were destroyed. But if you are operating a breeding or wholsale business from the residence they may decide to decline all portions of that loss from the claim. Based on the fact that its a commercial enterprise.
If you want to be insured properly you need to take a detailed inventory of all the animals and supplies and have a detailed price listing the costs of all the items being insured. Take that to your agent and he/she can get you quotes on commercial property coverage. Then you would need to decide if you want to purchse general liability for your business. So that you would be covered if someone was somehow hurt by you while you were in the act of conducting business. Coverage for animal bites is outrageously expensive so you would probably exclude that or the company my MAKE YOU EXCLUDE it in order for them to accept the risk. The costs associated with commercial liability coverage are variable depending on the amt of coverage needed (ie 25,000 per occurence up to say 1 mill per occurrence). Also depends on what types of animals are going to be sold and displayed. If the animals will be transported to other facilities for expos and sales etc... All those things factor into a properly rated insurance policy. Which is basically a contract between you and the insurance company detailing what is covered and what isnt.

Greg,

That's why I'm a life and health guy LOL. New Jersey is the WORST state for P&C stuff. I wouldn't even get involved with it here.

What kind of reptiles do you have? It might depend on whether they're poisonous or not in terms of the insurance. But I don't have exact answers for you, sorry man! It might help you to read some of the articles on http://www.businessinsurance.org - pretty informative site that can tell you about insurance options for all different types of businesses. Hope that helps!

If you want to have your business insured p roperly you need to disclose ALL of your income from these animals. This would mean taking a 20-30% hit on your income to get everything covered under you insurance.

Also, there are companies that will insure ANYTHING! You just have to call around and find one willing to take the risk. Then you have to decide whether or not the price tag is worth it.

Its a pretty personal decision.

Some good answers here!

I also used to sell insurance. I know I've posted this before, luckily I saved the text in case it needed to be reposted, see below. What you may need to do is consider livestock insurance. The company that provided this quote (back in the early 2000s) was Lloyds of London underwritten by Crowe Livestock Underwriting Limited, quoted through a brokerage I used to work for.

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I had always heard Lloyds of London was the only avenue available. I finally was able to get an example of costs, so I thought I would share!

For example… to insure a collection of ball pythons in the amount of $300,000 for Mortality and Theft coverage, with an annual aggregate deductible of $10,000, the yearly premium would be approximately $11,500. Of course lower deductibles increase the annual premium cost and higher deductibles lower it. A 1% deductible (in this example, that would be a $30,000 deductible) the yearly premium drops to approximately $5,000.

Again, please note, the example above is just that… an example. Lloyds evaluates each collection on a case by case basis. The application for the insurance is very thorough, asking for the type, age/hatch date, breeder, markings, etc. It also asks for detailed information about their security, caging and health. All of those factors as well as some additional considerations are what determine the actual price. I just thought it would be nice to provide an example of a quote. Obviously this is something made for people with large collections and in general is not cost effective for someone with only a few snakes.
I just thought this was interesting!

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edit to add - and be careful with your normal homeowners insruance, besides being excluded, if they find out you have 'dangerous/wild animals' they may drop your coverage all together.