Ever Heard Of Weather Insurance?
Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
Unconventional as it may seem, it is true that weather insurance not only exists, but it is one of the oldest sorts of insurance at all. Weather has been the crucial factor for farmers and their earnings, ever since the beginning of agriculture. The modern weather insurance can cover much more than crops.
The usual target of weather insurance is rain. The good news is that rain insurance is quite routine and quite easy to find. Concerning rain policies, you can choose rain accumulation policies (for this, you need to determine how much rain would still be acceptable for your event and how much would already ruin it) or dry hours (how many hours in a period of time were without any rain). Analogically you can take counteraction on snow, aiming on the inches per session or per storm. Snow removal insurance is a special version of a snow policy aimed at municipalities and public organs to cover any extra costs connected with snow.
And that is only where the whole business starts. There is wind insurance against bad wind conditions, great for instance for a hot air ballooning show. If you are planning an ice cream promotion event, you may want to go for a temperature insurance to secure your investment in case the weather is too cold.
Most insurers allow you to combine these insurances for any event. Film production companies are a typical customer for this mix, and many special insurance policies are offered just for the film industry – for instance insurance of underwater visibility or against lack of snow. Another typical client is a manager of a sports event, a concert, a festival or a trade show. And all the other people, whose business doesn’t directly depend on weather, like me, selling disability insurance, can at least insure good weather for leisure time activities and holidays.
This is quite a new product, just getting to the clients from the whole world. When you go on holiday and the weather is much worse than expected, some French travel agencies (in cooperation with Aon France) are offering partial money reimbursement. Equally, German airline Lufthansa has launched a new sunshine insurance. A simple insurance policy is offered for €20 ($31.24) for passengers from Germany. They can get €20 back for each day during their holiday when it rains more than 5mm.
Of course, for destinations such as Tunisia or Greece, weather insurance is not really necessary. And for places like Vancouver, they may not be willing to offer you a weather insurance. But just asking is for free.
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