What is an Insurance Deductible?

What is an Insurance Deductible - In an insurance policy, the insurance deductible is the amount of expenses that must be paid out of pocket before an insurer will pay any expenses. In general usage, the term deductible may be used to describe one of several types of clauses (see below) that are used by insurance companies as a threshold for policy payments.

How Does a Deductible Work? Deductibles are typically used to deter the large number of trivial claims that a consumer can be reasonably expected to bear the cost of. By restricting its coverage to events that are significant enough to incur large costs, the insurance firm expects to pay out slightly smaller amounts much less frequently, incurring much higher savings. As a result, insurance premiums are typically cheaper when they involve higher deductibles. For example, phone companies offer replacement plans, with the deductible set at the level of the wholesale price of the phone. As added benefit to them, the customer does not switch to different company as they often do with a new phone purchase.

Deductibles are normally provided as clauses in an insurance policy that dictate how much of an insurance-covered expense is borne by the policyholder. They are normally quoted as a fixed quantity and are a part of most policies covering losses to the policy holder. The insurer then becomes liable for claimable expenses that exceed this amount (subject to the maximum sum claimable indicated in the contract). Depending on the policy, the deductible may apply per covered incident, or per year. For policies where incidences are not easy to delimit (health insurance, for example), the insurance deductible is typically applied per year.

Several deductibles can be set by the insurer based on the cause of the claim. For example, a single housing insurance policy may contain multiple deductible amounts for loss or damage arising from theft, fire, natural calamities, evacuation etc. There are also insurance deductible reimbursement programs that reimburse a deductible in the event of an automobile, home, boat/yacht or health insurance claim.