What can’t I get an insurance quote for?

Insurance is a strange and wonderful thing that lets the people manage the risk of owning assets and protects a family’s future should some event remove a person’s ability to provide. There are many different types of insurance that provide cover for each type of risk or eventuality. The most common types of insurance are personal insurance products such as health insurance, life insurance, car insurance, home insurance or business insurance. The truth is you can get insurance quotes for just about anything these days, but do some of these niche products hold more relevance than others?

1. Body parts – while this type of insurance may have become big in the celebrity world thanks to the efforts of Jaylo, Dolly Parton and Mariah Carey. Celebrities insure a single physical feature to protect their livelihoods. What makes this different from a brain surgeon insuring his or her hands and is it really worth it? Let’s face it, if Jaylo had to lose a few kilograms she could still act in bad movies, Mariah Carey would still be as shrill if her legs were scarred and dolly Parton’s bra size will never make country music even worse to listen to. The publicity and media buzz created by insuring celebrity body parts might be worth every penny but the policy not so much. For our lowly brain surgeon, his or her hands might be more cause for concern. Traditional policies like life insurance usually includes disability cover which will cost you less and will provide adequate cover should injury or misfortune lead to the ruin of body parts that might keep stars or surgeons from being able to work.

2. Kidnapping and ransom – this might be more legit that insuring body parts because in reality wealthy people and companies are often targeted for ransom payments. Wealthy people can protect their family and children against abductions. Companies with employees in high risk areas such as the Middle East, South America and Russia can be kidnapped and held for ransom. These types of policies typically offer indemnity to cover the cost of the person paying the ransom. These losses can include the ransom itself, loss of money in transit, response team delivery costs, negotiator hire, and rewards for safe return of the kidnapped. However, ransom payments can never guarantee safe return of the kidnapped so these policies can also indemnify against death, disability and dismemberment as a result of the kidnapping.

3. Alien abduction and paranormal activity – more along the lines of the ridiculous, but for those that fear paranormal activity, they can insure themselves to be compensated for psychological and physical damage they might experience at the hands of their extra-terrestrial captors. Perhaps NASA should take a leaf out of this insurance booklet and insure their space expeditions against imminent alien attacks. Alternatively, simple car insurance would probably be a better option for replacing the lost Mars rover Spirit. Although NASA might have a hard time convincing the insurance company aliens hi-jacked the rover.

The point is, no matter how absurd or legitimate your concerns are about an event taking place, insurance companies have a formula to calculate the likelihood of an event occurring and an accompanying premium. So if you are concerned about something you would like to insure, ask your insurer for an insurance quote and you might be surprised.