Condo insurance: Identifying the Policyholder

Condominium insurance can be very confusing. But basically what you need to understand is that condo insurance protects your residence against losses that’s covered under your policy. However since this is a unified insurance, where several residences are involved, you can never really tell who the policy holder is when dealing with the condo insurance.

First let’s identify what a policy holder is. A policy holder is a person or an organization that owns the policy. Anyone who is insured or who pays for the premiums to keep the insurance coverage in force is supposed to be the policy holder. Therefore the condo insurance policy holder is owned by someone who pays for the policy. The homeowner’s association is not the condo insurance policy holder. Instead this organization is the policy holder of the master insurance policies. The term condo insurance does not refer to the master policies. It is way more than that because it provides protection to individual unit, whereas the master policy covers for the entire building, the common areas of the building and it extends to the exterior of the building. This policy is called the master’s policy and it does not cover your personal properties or any damages that may possibly happen to your unit.

In some part of the world, condo insurance is a requirement for every unit owner. But in some places, this is optional unless the mortgage lender requires it. If you are living in an area where this insurance policy is not required then it means that some of the unit owner does not carry condo insurances. If this is the case then not all unit owners are insurance policyholders and they are not entitled to insurance benefits.

In situations where in you live somewhere else yet owns a condo unit. You may own a different type of insurance policy, this type may not provide protection to your tenant’s belongings instead the unit. Tenants may protect themselves by purchasing renter’s insurance policy instead of condo insurance. In such case, your tenant will be the policy holder and not you even though you own the unit because your tenants pay for the insurance premium.