Homeowners insurance
The required underlier on the home side. Written and reviewed alongside the umbrella so the limits stack properly.
Review the lineCoverage / Umbrella
Umbrella, at meaningful limits.
Personal umbrella liability stacked over home and auto underliers. The coverage most households discover they were missing only at claim time.
The policy
A liability policy that sits above the other liability policies.
An umbrella policy is not additional coverage for your house or your car. It is a separate policy that activates when the liability limits on your underlying homeowners and auto policies are exhausted by a claim, and then pays the excess, up to the umbrella limit, on top of what the underliers already paid. It is the policy that does the actual work in a serious-liability loss, and it is the single most commonly under-sized coverage in the households we write.
An umbrella also picks up claim categories the underlying policies do not cover at all. Personal injury claims that include defamation, libel, and slander. Wrongful eviction claims from a rental property. Incidents on other premises, in other states, and in other countries. The umbrella is where those exposures are covered, and a household without one is exposed on all of them.
Why the number on the declarations page is the point
A one-million-dollar umbrella is not a liability policy for a household with more than a million dollars.
The default umbrella limit carriers quote to new buyers is one million dollars. For the households Armor Group writes, that number is frequently a rounding error against actual exposure. New York juries consistently return personal injury verdicts that run into seven and eight figures, and the limits on a homeowners or auto policy, even a generous one, cap out well below those numbers. The difference between the judgment and the underlying limit is what the umbrella pays. If the umbrella is too small, the difference comes out of the household's balance sheet.
The right umbrella limit is not a standard product choice. It is an account-level calculation run against the household's net worth, asset exposure, and the realistic exposure of the underlying policies. We do that calculation at the sitting, and we place the limit at a number that matches the household, typically into the high seven or low eight figures for the clients we write.
What the umbrella sits on
An umbrella is only as strong as the policies underneath it.
Every umbrella policy requires minimum underlying liability limits on the home and auto policies the umbrella sits above. If the underlying limits are too low, the carrier will not write the umbrella. If the household has a gap in the underlying coverage (a vehicle written on a different policy, a second home written with a different carrier, a rental property written on a different document) the umbrella may not cover the exposure from the gap.
The solution is to write the underlying homeowners policy and the underlying auto policy to the required limits with the same advocate who is placing the umbrella, so the stack is actually a stack and not a collection of disconnected documents. That is how we work the file.
Who needs meaningful umbrella limits
If there is something to protect, the umbrella is not optional.
Every household we write is a candidate for a real umbrella policy, and most of them arrive under-insured on this specific line. The households with the clearest need are the ones with multiple properties, multiple drivers, employed household staff, rental properties, animals on the premises, or any professional or social profile that raises the probability of a serious claim. A Saratoga homeowner who hosts events. A family with teenage drivers. A household that owns a second home in another state. A principal who runs a business whose personal exposure is tied to their professional visibility.
For all of them, the umbrella is the single most cost-effective coverage on the account: a large limit for a small premium relative to the exposure it covers, and the piece of the stack that does the actual work when a loss turns serious.
The carriers
Umbrella placed where the claim will actually be paid.
We're independent, which means we shop your umbrella coverage across leading carriers rather than being tied to one. The carriers we place with were chosen because their umbrella products behave the way a household hopes an umbrella will behave at claim time, not because their rates looked attractive on a comparison page.
Related coverage
The lines that sit alongside this one.
Personal auto coverage
The required underlier on the auto side. The umbrella sits over both home and auto liability. Both must be reviewed together.
Review the lineQuestions
What clients ask before they begin.
Written by
Armor Group Insurance Agency
New York licensed independent insurance agency
Armor Group Insurance is a New York-licensed independent insurance agency. Umbrella coverage availability, limits, required underlying limits, exclusions, and premiums vary by carrier, underwriting, and account-specific facts. An umbrella policy requires qualifying underlying homeowners and automobile liability coverage, and gaps in the underlying coverage may affect umbrella protection. This page is a general summary of the kinds of umbrella coverage the agency places and is not a contract, a binder, a quotation, or a guarantee of coverage. No coverage is bound until the carrier issues the policy. Contact the agency to review your specific situation and obtain a quotation.
Begin
Begin an umbrella quote.
Tell us about the household. We will calculate the exposure and place the limit to match.