If your family’s priorities and attention to detail rest a cut above average, chances are there is tangible evidence that underscores your hard work, whether it be your home(s), your car(s), your jewelry, your art, your guns, your sports memorabilia, and more. And the way you insure them matters, especially when they represent all your investments, hard work, and energy.
Whether you’re insuring your luxury home, property in multiple states, complicated risks, or multiple prized collections, families with high net worth and an eye for the finer things need insurance coverage that matches their level of commitment to success and all that it affords.
“A big mistake many people make – either out of a lack of knowledge or appropriate concern, or having grandfathered-in insurance relationships that may have begun back in college with fraternity brothers – is failing to protect their most valuable assets from ill-fitting coverage,” said Robert Kerdasha, risk adviser of The Summit Advisory at Assured Partners in Bluffton.
It’s an easily avoidable situation with the right insurance broker on your side – someone with a matched attention to detail and the resources to fully insure your assets.
Kerdasha is an individual with 35 years’ experience in the insurance industry. He earned the designation of Certified Advisor of Personal Insurance (CAPI) in 2015 from the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton Executive School of Business, as one of the initial 20 students.
Kerdasha’s Bluffton team consists of five account managers and administrators who specialize in high-net-worth personal lines of insurance. Their clients have much to show for their success, with typically multiple homes, valuable collections, luxury cars, boats or yachts of varying sizes – some even own private aircraft.
For owners of luxury homes who have a high net worth, standard homeowners’ insurance is likely not sufficient. High-value home insurance is designed specifically for these property owners, offering better dwelling insurance (including extended replacement cost coverage); better contents coverage (insuring all risks, not just the standard 16 named perils); and more generous liability coverage (including legal defense costs beyond policy limits).
Some specific advantages of a high-value home policy over a standard policy include:
• Cash settlement options on a total loss
• Waiver of AOP deductible for losses over $50K – excluding named storm/hurricane and earthquake
• No limit on law and ordinance coverage
• No limit for debris and demolition coverage
• Assignment of carrier adjuster the same day of the loss vs. contact from the reporting center
• Scheduled property coverage (jewelry, fine arts, wine, silverware, musical instruments, etc.) available without appraisals unless valued over $100K
• Unlimited water backup vs. $5,000 max limit for water backup damage
• Scheduled property insured at agreed value vs. settlement options through vendor/merchant for the lowest replacement cost.
If your home is valued at $1.5 million or more, it requires additional coverage that mass market coverage simply can’t provide. High-value home insurance expands to ensure every unique detail of your home and your life within it is protected: no worries, no guesswork.
“We are a family-style office with 75 years combined experience in the business, and we get to know our clients,” Kerdasha said. “Ninety-five percent of our work focuses on families – around 1,000 households around the country, with a stronghold in the Hilton Head, Bluffton, and Charleston communities. And we’ve managed to build business in all 50 states, to be exact. We have some presence, scale of office, so we’re truly national in scope in how we can help our clients. We can even work in the Caribbean. We’ve written residences in the Bahamas, Antigua, and Turks and Caicos. We also insured some commercial property in the Caribbean recently.”
Through Assured Partners, clients have access to high net worth insurance carriers, including Chub, Cincinnati, Berkley One, AIG, and Pure, along with many others. The firm is the fourth largest personal line insurance broker in the country when it comes to pure volume of business, and the eighth largest privately held broker in the country, with 9,000 employees and roughly 160-plus offices based out of Orlando, Fla.
Whether you live full- or part-time in the Lowcountry, The Summit Advisory can give you the assurance you need to protect what is most valuable to your family’s future.
“We’ve gone quite virtual since COVID,” Kerdasha said. “We recognize clients are more concerned about efficiency and the process of getting things taken care of, rather than live meetings, so many of our meetings consist of ‘Teams’ meetings online, phone calls, etc. We communicate with our clients regularly because of the depth of premium they spend. Whether a family needs high net worth personal insurance, commercial real estate insurance, or aviation insurance, we strive to be ‘Best of Class.’”
To upgrade your level of coverage to match your family’s net worth, call Kerdasha at (843) 405-8270 or email robert.kerdasha@assuredpartners.com.
