Choosing Boat Insurance: What to Look Out For
No matter the size or power of your boat, you need boat insurance to protect your investment – if nothing else. Whether your boat is a Cobra RIB or a Sunseeker superyacht, ensuring that you cover includes the protection of all valuable elements of your boat – plus third party damage – is the first step to ensuring you invest in adequate boat insurance.
In this guide, we’ll look at what a standard boat insurance policy looks like, what the key influencing factors are when it comes to the cost of a boat insurance policy, what features you definitely need, and which additional policy features are good to consider.
What’s usually included in a standard boat insurance policy?
This list includes everything that you should be looking for in a boat insurance policy. But like with any insurance policy, you need to read the policy document thoroughly to ensure there are no clauses that may allow the insurance company to wheedle out of paying any compensation.
Standard boat insurance includes:
- Accidental damage. This includes fire, theft, malicious damage, sinking, collisions, salvaging, and being stranded
- Transit risks for boats up to 30ft in length
- Potential risks when launching or lifting the boat out of water
- Engine damage
- Loss or damage caused by latent defects
- Frost damage
- Racing boats should look to add cover against mast and rigging damage
Including third party boat insurance as standard
Waterways become busy in the summer and with people motoring in and out of their berths, the risk of third party damage certainly increases. Your third party cover should cover you in the case of death, injury, or damage to a third party property that you may be responsible for.
What’s not typically included in a standard boat insurance policy?
Unsurprisingly, boat insurance companies do not provide any compensation on claims stemming from damage caused by wear and tear, age, or deliberate damage. Here’s a full list of what you won’t receive protection on:
- Devaluation due to age
- Damage caused by wear and tear
- Damage caused by corrosion osmosis (a corrosive type of water)
- Damage to machinery following a breakdown
- Theft – unless all of the right security precautions have been fulfilled
What are the top factors that affect the cost of boat insurance?
The cost of your boat insurance weighs heavily on the risk factors associated with your boat. And the risk factors associated with your boat depend on the category in which your boat sits – so a dingy insurance policy would be different to a sailing boat insurance policy.
Typically, a boat with a more powerful engine will cost more to insure, and the more complex a boat is to fix, the more expensive the policy will be, too. A superyacht – for example –will be much more complex to fix than a RIB boat.
Insurance companies will prioritise the value of a boat, how easy it is to steal, and damage risk, rather than its size when it comes to quoting for boat insurance. It would be worth mentioning to your insurance company where your boat spends most of its time – your drive or the marina – as this could have an impact on the overall cost of your policy.
Like car insurance, factors like how long you’ve been driving a boat, whether you’ve made any previous claims, and the postcode in which your boat is kept will have an impact on your boat insurance policy cost, too.
Boat Insurance: A summary of advice
When it comes to boat insurance, it’s best to be completely honest with how you use the boat, where the boat spends the majority of its time, and your experience in driving boats.
Make sure your policy includes all the cover you need before you sign on the dotted line. For example, an insurance company may have put a crafty clause in place which means high value components aren’t covered.
Make sure your policy includes all types of water – for example, you may wish to take your boat on a river one day and drive it to a lake on another.
To avoid any future conflicts with your insurance company, ensure your boat is regularly maintained and serviced so they don’t attribute a claim to wear and tear.
For Cobra RIBs, our team of engineers are on board to ensure your boat is ready and rearing to go for a season of adventure in the water.
