Are your bikes insured?

Road bike$, mountain bike$, cross bike$, fat bike$, BMX bike$, electric bike$ – they add up.

A new client came in recently who was a competitive road bike racer. Once we started talking, we realized that she was assuming her bikes were covered by her home policy. Before looking at her existing coverage we wanted to get a clear picture of her bike’s value. It turns out, she (and her family) had 10 different bikes – the lowest one valued at $500, and the highest one valued at $15,000.

If you’re not into biking, you might be experiencing sticker shock at the value of these bikes. But for many bike enthusiasts, a single mid-range specialty bike can cost upwards of $8,000. Now if you’re involved in different types of biking or bike racing – apply that to each sport-specific bike. The cost adds up. But even for an average family that choses to buy higher-end bikes for their family, you can quickly end up with $20,000 in value for 4 bikes.

When it comes to insuring your bikes – road, cross, mountain, commuter, electric, tandem, etc. – you need to talk to your insurance broker directly to make sure you understand the coverage you have in place within your homeowners, condo or tenant policy and then make decisions on the best way to document and insure your bikes.

Now that we knew what the value of the bikes were, we investigated her existing coverage. It turns out that her company only had coverage for $1000 per bike…which is pretty average. The included coverage for bikes changes based on the insurance company, and it could range between $500 – $5000 per bike.

For this client, $1000 per bike was not going to be close to covering the cost of a loss.

There are all kinds of specialty floater insurance options for things like bikes, jewelry, collectibles, coins, etc. These types of high value things have some coverage under your basic insurance but to really insure the proper value of the items, you need to do the diligence of documenting the value and carrying separate insurance policy for the item.

The racing bike this client had also had multiple wheel sets, high-end component upgrades and more that needed to be documented on that bike alone. The more information the insurance company has about the value of your item, the better when it comes to making a claim later!

It turns out this bike racer also didn’t know that to be covered for a loss, all 10 bikes had to be stored in her garage AND be locked securely to a garage structure. She also wasn’t clear that her racing bike was not covered for damaged incurred while racing.

Insurance around high value items like bikes can be very confusing. Don’t just assume you’re covered. Talk to your insurance broker about your situation. Let them know the value of your items and what responsibility you have for keeping those items safe. For bikes, jewelry, coins, collectibles and many other high value items, the right coverage starts with talking to your insurance broker.