melloInsurance

Serving our clients, Serving our community

Lyndon Block

Fire Fighting

Living in Saskatchewan exposes us to a wide range of weather conditions, including hail, wind, extreme heat, rain, snow, and ice. When these elements combine, it often leads to unavoidable disasters.

A few years ago, Northern Saskatchewan faced severe forest fire situations due to a dry spring and constant wind. This year, British Columbia is also struggling with a wave of uncontrollable forest fires. We express our gratitude to the brave firefighters and volunteers who risk their lives to combat these fires.

During the fall, particularly around harvest time, the ground, grass, and crops in Saskatchewan tend to become dry. With the dry vegetation and warm weather, the conditions are ripe for potential grass fires. Whether you’re working in the fields, having a campfire, or engaging in any outdoor activities, it is essential to keep a fire extinguisher nearby. Having this precautionary measure readily available allows you to extinguish any initial sparks, which can significantly reduce the risk of a fire.

In the event of a fire, it is crucial to ensure you have appropriate coverage on your insurance policy to protect against potential losses. If you reside in an urban area, it is advisable to check with your village, town, or city to determine if your taxes cover any fire department charges that may arise from attending a fire for which you are responsible. For those residing in rural areas, the local fire department will respond, but you will likely be responsible for the costs associated with their deployment and firefighting efforts. In cases where you live near multiple Rural Municipalities (RMs), towns, or cities, multiple fire departments may be involved, resulting in substantial service fees. For instance, a single fire department’s call-out fee can amount to $1200 or more, with additional costs of $800-$1000 per hour for firefighting operations.

To protect against these potential expenses, you can consider purchasing “Volunteer Fire Fighting” coverage on your home or farm policy. Some insurance companies offer coverage limits of $2000, $5000, or $10,000 for this purpose. We strongly recommend consulting with us to ensure you have this coverage and that it is adequate for your specific area. It is also advisable to contact your local RM office to understand the firefighting costs in your vicinity and the coverage amounts commonly carried by residents. Depending on your location, it may be prudent to have a minimum coverage of $15,000-$20,000 to guarantee sufficient protection.

Should you have any inquiries regarding this coverage or require further assistance, please do not hesitate to reach out to one of our insurance professionals.

Do I qualify for Guaranteed Replacement Cost coverage on my home, and should I carry it if I do?

Buying a house will be one of the biggest decisions you will ever make. There are many questions and concerns when it comes to what house to buy. The age, the condition, renovations, yardwork, taxes, etc. Buying your insurance is one of the decisions that is usually left until the end, when you have already made an offer.

So how does this work?

We gather information on the house from you and possibly, the realtor. This information usually includes things like: Year built, square footage, type of construction (Frame, concrete, brick); heating, electrical, roofing, plumbing – any updates that were done to these 4; flooring, siding, and some other questions about the kitchen & bathrooms. With all these answered, we can use our replacement cost calculators to determine what the cost would be to rebuild your house. These calculators are updated quarterly by contractors and suppliers to make sure that the numbers are up to date with current labour and material costs.

Once we have your replacement value calculated, we use this information with our insurance carriers to see if we can obtain Guaranteed Replacement Cost coverage on your dwelling (GRC).  Depending on the year built and the updates that have been made, you may qualify for this coverage.

So why is this coverage important?

If a claim arises, perhaps a fire or flood, and your house has be torn down and rebuilt because of the extensive damage; you are going to have to rebuild a new house on your property. If your house was built in 1975, it will be hard to rebuild your house with materials and labour from 1975. So you are going to have to use today’s price; that being said, today’s prices can still vary from month to month.

Especially in Saskatchewan, our construction costs can vary, depending on which season we are in. So if you have to rebuild your house in the winter, the costs for labour, concrete, framing, etc., can be much higher as they are working in colder climates, which can cause delays or there are more costs to keep materials heated. So to rebuild an average house in summer might cost $350,000, however, that same house in winter, might cost closer to $375,000.
home-pak-2So how do we stay properly covered?  

By insuring to GRC, the insurance carrier guarantees to rebuild your house at the current costs of construction. For example, your house is insured for $350,000 and 6 months into your policy, your house burns down. When you get your quotes from your general contractors, they say to rebuild a similar house would cost $365,000 with the current materials and labour. Even though your policy looks like it is capped at $350,000, because you carry the GRC coverage, they will pay the full cost to rebuild of $365,000. This coverage just saved you $15,000.

So how do we make sure we keep this coverage in place?

Every 4-5 years, we are required by the insurance carrier to submit an updated evaluation of your dwelling. If you make any changes or updates to your dwelling, we need to re-calculate this evaluation and send it in to keep your value up to date. The insurance carrier, will also apply annual inflation protection to make sure they are keeping up with the increased costs year after year.

We want to make sure that your largest investment is properly looked after. This coverage will give you that peace of mind, that it is. If you have any questions about this coverage, please contact our offices.

The reasons why you need Contractor’s Insurance

There are many different types of contractors out there. Whether you are a carpenter, painter, roofer, plumber, electrician; work in the oilfield, road construction or make cabinets, you will need some kind of business insurance.

Each of these contractors will have individual risks that they will need to keep their business protected from. For example: A carpenter doesn’t secure the roof trusses properly, and a wind comes along and rips the roof off of the house. He would be liable for not properly anchoring the roofing system down to the main structure. This loss could be for the trusses, the damage to the building itself and if there are people nearby, a potential injury claim could arise.

These types of simple mistakes can happen more often than not. Whether you have an apprentice who is working for you and makes a mistake or you simply had a busy day where you rushed and missed a few steps; these types of scenarios can occur that can open you up to a possible lawsuit or claim situation.

This is why you need to purchase a contractor’s insurance policy with general liability. General liability coverage for products and completed operations as well as property damage and injury are available on almost every commercial contractors policy. These coverages are what you will need to make sure you are adequately covered in the event that a mistake is made. After all, we are all human and prone to human error. This policy gives you the peace of mind that you are looked after in case a simple mistake occurs.
Another reason to purchase a contractor’s insurance policy is to protect the assets of your business. If you have a cabinet shop or similar business, you will likely have a shop or some kind of facility where you store your tools, products and inventory. To protect this investment, we should insure the building, the tools and the inventory. We can insure the building based on the construction type and we can put a blanket policy to cover all of your tools and inventory. If you have high valued tools or equipment, we will likely need to list those items individually to make sure we are properly covering that specific item. Many of the tools you carry are with you in your trucks; we can design a policy to cover those tools while on site and intransit. You will need to make sure you lock those tools up overnight as some policies do not cover theft without a sign of forced entry. So make sure you look after your tools as well.

There are many other coverages that we can discuss as this is just skimming the surface. Coverages like business interruption (If your business shuts down due to a claim, how will you continue to pay for your bills/payroll/taxes?); Boiler & Machinery coverage (A loss due to a sudden mechanical failure from the equipment fixed to your buildings); Other losses deriving from accounts receivable losses, glass breakage, data loss & recovery, etc. These items “fill in the cracks” of a commercial policy. They are very important and often forgotten, so it is important to discuss your operation thoroughly with us so we can design a policy to protect your business in every way possible.

You specialize in your trade and you want to make sure your customers are well-looked after. We want the same thing, therefore, looking after your business is our number one priority. If you haven’t already, please contact us, so we can start this process on giving you the peace of mind you need to keep your focus on what’s important, your clients!

Back to School Shopping Advice

As the summer starts to vanish, a bright new school year appears. Children are either excited to meet up with their friends again or distraught that another school year approaches. Whatever the case, they will need some supplies to make this upcoming year, a successful one.

Here is some basic essentials, you will need when you purchase your kids supplies.

– Pencils (Remember they required that you use an HB2 pencil when we wrote those dreaded CAT tests. Are those still a thing?)

– Eraser (For all those mistakes we never make)

– Ruler (Using your thumb to pinky is not an accurate measurement)

– Scissors (Don’t Run with these suckers)

– Calculator (For when long division on a chalkboard gets too lengthy)

– Compass/Protractor Kit  (I don’t know if we ever used the compass, drew a pretty circle once though!)

–  Notebooks (Let the daydream doodling begin)

–  Glue (Hope and pray your kid isn’t the “glue eating kid”)


Then of course there are the higher end supplies that kids need now; the stuff that we didn’t even know existed.

– Laptop (Apple, Chromebook or Microsoft) – “All the right type, here we come!”
Make sure you do your “homework” on these laptops as they each have a different system and have different apps installed on each of them.

– Backpack (When your kid thinks a grocery back isn’t “cool enough”)

– Lunch Kit  (Paper bag with a smashed peanut butter and jam sandwich at the bottom sounds good to me!)

– Gym Clothes / Shoes (Used to love playing volleyball in corduroy pants; melt your legs right off!)

Some kids are very organized, which is a rare, but fantastic trait. For those needing the finer things in life, (I mean) school supplies, here are some of those items that can help keep your kids school career on track.

–  Paper clips, staples, tape, rulers, rubber bands, sticky notes, highlighters, or even an assignment planner; they may not be required, but useful to keep things organized for the school year.  

When registering for the upcoming year, make sure you review the textbooks and class requirements, to be sure you have all the supplies needed for your child. Each teacher will have a different curriculum and it will be important to have the right gear for your kid. After school extra curriculars are important too, as they will help get your kids out and create a social life outside the classroom. Not facebook social, the other kind of social; where you play in the park with sticks and eat dirt, kind.

Here are some links to get you started. Good luck, and all the best in the upcoming school year!


                  

Be prepared for this years Harvest

With the warm weather comes a ripening crop. We are approaching harvest very quickly, in fact there were some combines out in the field already.

Every harvest has potential risks, and we need to make sure that those risks are either managed properly or that you have coverage in place to protect yourself in the event of a loss. First of all, with the warm weather and dry stalk, there is a potential fire trap in the combine. From the risk management side, you should have a fire extinguisher nearby at all times, and a water truck on the field, wouldn’t be a bad idea either. As for insurance, please review your equipment list with us and look over the values on that equipment, to make sure it is up to date. We would hate to have a loss and realize the equipment wasn’t listed or it was underinsured.


It  is important to make sure you have loss of use coverage on your policy for your machinery. Loss of use coverage is money you can use for a rental, if your equipment has had an insurable loss. For example: You have an ingestion claim on your combine that has resulted in damages of $25,000. The ingestion damage is covered under your insurance policy on your combine, however, you need another combine to continue with harvest while this is being repaired. If you have loss of use coverage of $10,000, you can use this coverage to rent a combine during the time your combine is being repaired.  There are different limits you can buy, we used $10,000 as an example. Please contact our office if you would like to add this coverage or more information on it.

If the conditions were right this year, you may have a bumper crop. Once that crop is in the bin ready to be transported; we need to make sure that your investment is covered. Insuring your threshed grain should be a priority to prevent losses due to theft, fire, windstorm, and upset and overturn during transportation. Your grain should be insured to a minimum 80% of replacement value to avoid co-insurance.
Today’s bins are getting larger and more complicated. With automatic bin sweeps, aeration fan systems and other technology; we need to properly insure these structures. For risk management, we would  suggest anchoring down your hopper bins to make sure they are secure, even if there is or isn’t grain in the bins. This will also result in a rate reduction for the insurance premiums on those bins. With all of  the fixed equipment in the bin, “equipment breakdown” coverage will help cover losses due to a sudden and accidental mechanical failure. And again, when insuring the bin, we should insure it for the replacement value, that way if there was damage due to fire, wind or collision from moving machinery, you are eligible for full value of the bin if replacement or repairs are needed.

The old farm saying is, the season is not over until the grains in the bin. Some might say until you have a cheque in your hand. There are a lot of variables on the way, and if we can protect your investment through that process, you will sleep better at night.

Saskatchewan Summer Storms

In the Province of Saskatchewan, wind is a part of everyday life. However, the frequency of the recent storms we’ve been having, are not. These storms have brought tornado warnings, plow winds, hailstorms and torrential downpours. With these severe risks, we need to make sure we are properly covered so that if one of these events hits us close to home or by the lake, we are properly covered.

Most basic insurance home policies include the wind and hail perils automatically, but there are some coverages that may be available to top up your policy. An insurance company  is responsible to repair or replace the damage to your house. If hail and wind damage one side of your dwelling, they will fix that side. However as siding and shingles age over time, the new material may not match the remaining three sides that were left undamaged. SGI Canada has a Prestige policy which removes this “obsolescence clause” to help cover those remaining 3 sides to make sure your house goes back to the way it was designed to be. This is normally not covered under most home policies. There are some requirements to qualify for Prestige coverage, so please contact our office if this would interest you.
With these thunderstorms, there may be a lot of water that comes with it. MMFI, SGI Canada and Wawanesa have created Flood/Water Protection coverages to help protect you from a flooding situation. This never used to be covered, but now you can buy this new coverage. Insurance companies also recommend installing automatic sump pumps and backwater valves in your main sewer line to prevent water claims. These preventative measures may result in a potential discount on your policy. The rates/eligibility will vary depending on your location; but with the recent flooding in Lloydminster, Calgary, High River, it may be worth looking into. Contact us to see what’s available for you.

As for your vehicles, it is important to always carry a package policy. The main reason is to carry a higher liability limit in case there was ever an injury or serious collision. The other reason is to have a reduced deductible in the event of a loss. Some of the plow winds up north have caused a ton of damage to people’s campers, trailers, boats and their trucks and cars. If you had to pay a $700 deductible for each of those losses, it would end up being quite expensive, but if you have a package policy, your deductible can be as low as $50 for that type of situation. Please ask us about an auto pak policy to help make an auto claim a little bit easier. These extension policies will also cover the vehicle and trailers during the winter months while they are in storage. For as little as $5 a month for a cabin trailer policy; it is worth looking into. Give us a call so we can help you out.

Summer storms can be volatile and you need to be prepared in the event that a storm occurs near your house or while you’re on vacation. If you have any concerns or questions, don’t hesitate to contact our office.