Umbrella Insurance by Company: What Each Carrier Actually Publishes

If you searched your insurance company's name next to the word umbrella, you probably wanted one of two things. Either you want to know how much coverage you can get, or you want to know whether your carrier is any good at this.

Most pages answer with a ranking. That is not the useful answer, because on the thing you actually asked about, the carriers barely differ.

The limit is not what decides this

Almost every major carrier sells personal umbrella coverage in the same range. One million dollars at the bottom, five million at the top, sold in even increments. There is no carrier where the answer is two hundred thousand, and there is no mainstream carrier handing out fifty million to a household.

So the question how much umbrella can I get from my carrier usually has the same answer no matter whose name you put in front of it.

The question that actually decides whether you can buy the policy at all is a different one, and it is the one nobody searches for:

How much liability do you already carry on the auto and home policies underneath it?

This is not the same as the general advice to know your own limits before shopping, which is covered in what umbrella insurance actually is. This is a gate. Before a carrier will write the policy at all, they require your auto and homeowners liability to already sit at or above a floor they set, because the umbrella only begins paying where those policies stop.

If your auto liability is below that floor, the answer to "can I get a two million dollar umbrella" is no. Not because of the umbrella. Because of the policy underneath it.

What the carriers actually publish

Here is what two major carriers state on their own websites, quoted directly. These were read on their own pages, not taken from a comparison site.

Amica describes its personal umbrella in terms of price rather than a range:

For less than a dollar a day, you can add $1 million of personal umbrella insurance coverage.

Amica's page also gives a worked example that shows how the layering works: a dog bite causing $600,000 in damages against a home policy with a $500,000 liability limit, where the umbrella covers the remaining $100,000.

Travelers publishes a range:

$1 million to $5 million of liability, which can help protect assets such as your home

What none of them publish

Here is the honest gap, and it is the whole reason this page exists.

The underlying limit requirement is the number that decides your application, and it is the number carriers are least likely to put on a public page. When they do publish it, it is often buried, state-specific, or written as an example rather than a rule.

I looked for a published underlying-limit figure from several more carriers while writing this and could not locate one on their own sites. That does not mean the requirement does not exist. Every umbrella carrier has one. It means you will not find it by searching, and any page that gives you a confident number for a specific carrier is very likely quoting a comparison blog rather than the carrier.

So do not take a number for your carrier's underlying requirement from anyone, including this page, unless it came from your carrier.

The three questions to actually ask

When you call, these are the ones that determine the answer:

1. What are the minimum auto and homeowners liability limits I need before you will write an umbrella for me?
2. Do my current limits already meet that, and if not, what would it cost to raise them?
3. Does the umbrella cover everything my underlying policies cover, or are there exclusions the auto and home policies do not have?

That third one catches people. An umbrella is not simply a bigger version of what you already have. Coverage that exists on your homeowners policy is not automatically extended by the umbrella above it, and the gaps vary by carrier and by state.

Where this leaves you

If you are shopping, the comparison that matters is not which carrier offers the highest ceiling. It is:

• What underlying limits does each require, and do you already meet them
• What does raising your underlying limits cost, since you may need to do that anyway
• What does the umbrella exclude that your current policies do not

Those three answers will differ meaningfully between carriers. The headline limit almost certainly will not.

What this page does not claim

The quotes above are from the carriers' own websites and are linked at the bottom so you can read them in context. They were current when this page was written.

Insurance terms change, and they vary by state. A limit or a price published nationally may not be what is available where you live. Nothing here is a quote, an offer, or a statement of what any carrier will actually sell you.

If you want to know what your own policy already covers before you add anything on top of it, that is the thing to establish first. Find out what your existing policy actually covers, then decide what belongs above it.

This article is general information, not insurance, financial, or legal advice.