Property and casualty insurance are types of coverage that protect the things you own (like your home, car, and other belongings, or even your pets). These insurances also include liability coverage. This helps protect you if you’re found legally responsible for an accident that causes injuries to another person or damages to their property.
What is property and casualty insurance?
Property and casualty insurance, or P&C insurance, is an umbrella term to describe a bunch of different types of insurance, covering your personal property and offering liability coverage. Types of P&C insurance are homeowners insurance, condo insurance, co-op insurance, HO4 insurance, liability insurance, pet insurance, and car insurance.
P&C insurance does not include other types of insurance coverage such as life insurance, health insurance, and fire insurance.
Property Insurance
Broadly speaking, property insurance refers to your personal belongings ie. stuff you own. However, depending on the type of insurance policy you hold, property insurance can be defined differently. For example, in a renters policy, your property is referred to as personal property. In the policy it’s referred to as Coverage C, and it applies to your stuff in the event of a covered loss.
Property insurance is a popular insurance policy for business owners and protects the business property in the case of vandalism and theft, covering the structure, and its contents. Another variation is pet insurance, which is surprising since pets are part of our families. But since your insurance reimburses you for the costs of your cat’s or dog’s care it’s considered property insurance as well.
TL;DR: Personal property coverage (aka contents insurance) part of any standard renters or homeowners insurance policy, helps you recover the cost of your lost or damaged stuff for a bunch of different scenarios, which we’ll dive into in the following sections.
Casualty Insurance
In a nutshell, casualty insurance refers to insurance that covers the legal responsibility for losses stemming from damage to another’s property or an injury to another person. In homeowners and renters insurance, you’ll find this type of coverage in your liability coverage amounts of your policy.
Casualty insurance is a common insurance policy for small business owners since it protects a company from liabilities in the situation that a worker is hurt on company property.