Taking the confusion out of your community cover
So, you’re here because you either have grand designs on owning a community scheme, have been asked to join the body corporate of an estate, or you live in a townhouse and are curious about how your home is insured.
Whatever the reason for why you’ve found us, don’t be alarmed if you’re already confused. Sectional title insurance, or community insurance as it’s called in our kingdom, isn’t the easiest type of cover to understand. But we’re going to do the right thing and explain the 3 most important things that you need to know about our community insurance.
Let’s start.
The king’s community insurance
We understand that cover is a legal requirement for all community schemes. There’s actually an act that deals with this insurance, called the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act (STSMA). It’s pretty comprehensive. And long. And confusing.
We’ve read the whole thing, back to front/front to back, so we know what you need to have from your policy… But more than making sure that our cover is legally up to scratch, we’ve also made sure that our cover is pro-active and backed by an experienced management team and advanced systems and technology.
With this foundation in place, we can deliver innovative and flexible insurance and maintenance solutions to keep your community’s communal areas and your own private property in the best possible condition, no matter what happens.
The king covers:
- All body corporates.
- Home owners’ associations.
- Share block investors’ schemes.
- Retirement schemes.
1. Be clear about what’s covered
The STSMA lays out the bare essentials of what absolutely has to be covered, from the buildings to public liability and fidelity cover. It even goes over the excesses that you have to pay.
The king’s community insurance covers:
- The full replacement value of all or any of the residential sections in the complex and any common property that’s damaged by burst pipes, riots, fire, flood, earthquake, and vehicle collisions.
- Liability, including third party public liability, trustees’ liability, and employer’s liability.
- Machinery breakdown, accidental damage, loss of money, demolition costs, inflation and escalation, and the cost of security services that you might need if your property is vulnerable after an insured event.
- The cost for alternative accommodation or even the loss of rent for owners whose homes were made unliveable for a set period.
2. How to insure your scheme for the right amount
Everything is done by our sectional title experts and royal number crunchers. Everyone works together to draw up a schedule so that we can calculate the full replacement value of the entire community.
This includes each unit’s worth, taking into account any communal areas, walling, foyers and stairways, lifts, garages, and communal facilities (like a clubhouse, gym, or swimming pool). Then we’ll add the professional fees, potential reconstruction costs, demolition costs, and VAT.
3. Check the correct replacement amounts
The STSMA gets pretty specific about how you need to cover the actual replacement value of your units. So, our first item on the checklist is to make sure that your units are insured for the correct replacement amounts. Especially (and we can’t stress this enough) if you’ve gone to the trouble of adding value to your units.
Underinsuring your units is a pretty big way to face disappointment if you ever have to claim, so the king recommends (read: strongly urges) that you regularly update your insured values on your policy to keep up with the market-related replacement value and make sure your policy is offering you the biggest bang for your proverbial buck.
We obviously never want you to have to claim, but life happens. So, we want to help you back into the same position you were in before you had to claim.
The king will save the day
Our mission is to help you to find and fix risks before disaster even strikes. Our building inspection, maintenance, and monitoring expertise all works together with our specialised risk reporting and supply chain management, to reduce the risks that your community faces.
And that’s just the start of how we look after your community. It just makes sense to get our royal touch in your life! Call our royal community insurance team on 0860 11 11 07 or pop an email to [email protected]
