The news that Jason Wilkins has installed a £13,000 artificial putting green in the front garden of his house got insurancedealer thinking about whether he considered if this was covered under his property insurance policy for theft of malicious damage. By having his picture in the London edition of Metro this morning in front of his fine home with his gleaming Aston Martin strategically parked, one would suggest, nay, hope that he doesn’t have a typical cheap home insurance policy that is easily obtainable on the Internet and that he has employed the services of a professional insurance broker. Internet style or bedroom rated policies that give a one size fits all approach, by and large do exactly what that set out to do but tend to be inflexible where special consideration is needed such as enhancing the valuables limit or £13,000 putting greens. This is where high net worth or HNW policies kick in. Most are extremely flexible, are able to go off the standard track and, with the assistance of a good broker, can be tailored to suit. There are no shortage of insurance companies offering these products. Hiscox, Chubb and Zurich are well known names in this field and some will cater for second homes or cheap unoccupied property insurance and supplementary products such as Yacht or Family fleets to cater for their supercars.
Apparently Mr Wilkins, from Bournemouth, Dorset installed this green as a result of winning the chance to play with Tiger Woods but insurancedealer cannot help but groan at the puns attached such as ” it won’t handicap his chances (of winning)” and “fore sale”. We’re just ‘green’ with envy….