Protecting Yourself and Others In and Around Your Home

Each June since 1996, the United States observes National Safety Month each June to promote awareness of and encourage efforts to keep each other safe in our homes, on the road, and in shared spaces throughout our communities. Of course, keeping people and property safe is a year-round endeavor. Safety Insurance and our agents are dedicated to helping homeowners, drivers, and business owners keep everyone safe from harm and ensuring policyholders are supported when damages or incidences occur.

Keeping Safe In and Around Your Home

Home is one of the places where we feel most welcome and safe. It is a refuge for relaxation, rejuvenation, and recreation. However, it is important to not let feelings of comfort crowd out the importance of keeping aware of your surroundings and mitigating risks as an essential means in protecting yourself, other people, and your property. Promoting and practicing safety in around and your home is as simple as:

• Mitigating the Risk for Accidents – Simple steps like keeping clutter away from doors and stairs, ensuring furniture and wires are secured in place, and securing medical and cleaning supplies go a long way in preventing accidents around the home.

• Preparing for Extreme Weather – As climate change continues to worsen, the frequency of extreme weather events that cause damage like flooding or incursions into the home will continue to increase. Make sure you have an emergency response plan in place in addition to keeping up with routine maintenance.

• Protecting Against Intrusions – These days, intruders are just as likely to enter homes through the cyber realm as they might by walking through the door or breaking a window. Keep yourself and your data safe by using strong passwords, deleting suspicious emails and links, and being vigilant.

With your safety in mind, our homeowners insurance policies in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, offer a broad selection of coverage including coverage for losses to your home and its contents from numerous perils, and coverage for liability to others arising from ownership or occupancy of your home. Enhanced coverage is available in each market, please see individual state pages linked above for more details. Additionally, we offer competitive rates, including discounts for being loss free and a discount of 20% if you insure your automobile with us.

What Does Home Insurance Cover?

Typical home insurance coverage (level HO-3) protects the buildings on your property against certain types of damage and affords you personal liability coverage.

• Damage. Your home and personal property are protected against fire, lightning, frozen pipes tornado, hail and windstorms. Also covered are losses caused by vandalism, theft, riot and any flooding caused by indoor plumbing or air/heat conditioning systems.

• Dwellings. In addition to your house (referred to as the “dwelling”), any structures on your property, such as the garage, are covered.

• Contents. All contents, personal belongings and electronics stored inside your home are covered. However, if your personal possessions include expensive jewelry or art, you might want to purchase additional floater coverage for those items if their replacement costs are higher than your coverage allows.

• Liability. You are covered for bodily injury or property damage whether you are negligent or not. Other home insurance coverage characteristics include medical payments to others up to a specified amount. “Medical payments” is designed to cover small medical bills while protecting you and your insurance company from potential lawsuits.

• Other structures. Other structures covered are fencing around your property and detached buildings such as a barn, shed or pool house. Depending on your coverage, other structures might not be covered at 100 percent replacement value.

• Uninhabitable. Should your home become uninhabitable and you are forced to live somewhere else during repairs, this situation is called “loss of use” and is included in most home insurance coverage. Limits for this expense depend on your policy.

Finally, Safety Insurance offers Home Cyber Protection, a bundled coverage that protects individuals and families from losses such as compromised data on personal computers, mobile devices and other connected home technology, as well as damage to software and operating systems. Home Cyber Protection provides coverage for cyber extortion, home systems attack, data breaches, computer attacks, and online fraud.

Please view our products for more information on our endorsements. Please contact your independent agent and they will be happy to answer any questions about coverage. Safety Insurance helps you manage life’s storms both online and in person.