Quake Insurance Protection - Be Ready for the Next Shake

In the wake of the earthquake near the Japanese islands and the devastation it caused within the country, we examined the exposure of Canadians to earthquakes and the insurance products able to protect and help us.  The developments in Japan make us feel very strongly for survivors and victims alike.

Earthquakes are destructive and emotionally disturbing.  In Japan, the Sendai quake shook the ocean floor as much as to earn 9.0 points.  Hence, it ranked as the 5^th most massive earthquake recorded in the history. The power of the earthquake, however, is not in fact the most important either.  A less significant earthquake hitting an inhabited area will come to be more damaging than a massive one far from the coast.  If you remember, the last quake came to Canada not that long ago, hitting us with a magnitude of 5.0 in June 2010 in Ontario.  The thing nobody wants to worry about after withstanding something like an earthquake is paying for the reparations of the harms.  And this is where insurance coverage can come in very handy.

All 5 leading Canadian insurance providers LSM Insurance approached will include death resulting from a disaster of this type.  The caveat is that the disaster cannot occur while visiting a place that has a travel exclusion, such as a war zone.

The incidence of natural disasters of impact going in a steady fashion.  It was only two months before the Sendai tragedy that large areas of Australia were under water.

While only 75 thousand lives were lost per year in the nineties, as opposed to 86,328 per year during the 1980s, an average of 211 million people were moved by natural disaster in the 1990s, which is an increase from over 147 million in the eighties.

The number of natural disasters thrice that of the 60s.  What is more, the economic cost has jumped up by a factor of nine over the same time.

Dying due to an earthquake is increasingly likely, so in Canada, wanting life insurance that steps in when you become a victim of an earthquake is pretty sensible.

Author, Lorne Marr, is an independent insurance broker and an expert on Canadian life insurance.  Lorne has worked in this industry for nearly two decades.  His LSM Insurance brokerage firm works with more than 12 Canadian life insurance companies.