PERSONAL INLAND MARINE · 5 MIN READ

Why Floaters Beat Homeowners Coverage C

Personal inland marine floaters exist to fix the structural weaknesses of homeowners Coverage C for valuable, portable property. The HO-3 covers personal property only for named perils, imposes special sublimits on categories like jewelry (a $1,500 theft cap is the classic example) and watercraft, and restricts business property to small on-premises and off-premises amounts. A ring that slips off a finger into a drain, hearing aids dropped into a lake, or a stone that simply vanishes are not named perils — the homeowners policy pays nothing. The Personal Articles Floater (PAF), and its homeowners cousin the HO 04 61 Scheduled Personal Property endorsement, solve all three problems at once. Scheduled items are covered on an open-perils (all-risk) basis: every cause of direct physical loss is covered unless specifically excluded, which sweeps in accidental loss and mysterious disappearance. Coverage is worldwide — the scheduled ring is protected at home, in transit, and on vacation abroad. And each item carries its own stated limit, replacing the homeowners sublimits with full scheduled value. A little history rounds out the picture. The Personal Property Floater (PPF) was the historical broad form that covered substantially all of an insured's personal property — scheduled and unscheduled — worldwide on an open-perils basis before the modern homeowners forms absorbed that role. Similarly, the legacy Personal Computer Floater faded once homeowners forms treated electronics as ordinary contents; today high-value equipment is scheduled on a PAF or HO 04 61 instead. Pet insurance, historically classified as inland marine, is now written as a separate product line.