Can you explain secondary insurance coverage?

Secondary insurance is used to provide additional financial liability protection, fill gaps in your primary policy, or to increase the limits of a given policy. There are several types of secondary insurance policies, designed to meet the needs of different types of basic insurance policy, such as health, home, or auto insurance. How your secondary insurance will work depends on the type of policy and how the secondary policy is written.

In health insurance, a secondary policy can be used to fill gaps in the primary insurance, such as providing dental and hearing coverage, but it can also be used to increase the coverage limits. For instance, if your spouse has the primary policy but you have exhausted the coverage for a particular type of care, you may be able to use your own health insurance to cover the remainder. Having a secondary health insurance policy is especially helpful for a family with children or families with one or more serious medical conditions.

In car or home insurance, secondary policies can take many forms. For instance, you may have a secondary personal property policy, or individual policies for more valuable items. A secondary policy could also be an umbrella policy which provides liability coverage across all of your personal insurance policies that include liability. How each secondary policy interacts with your primary insurance will be described in the policy.

As an analogy, think of a secondary insurance policy as an extra gas tank. The primary tank will take you as far as it can go, but when that one runs out of fuel you can switch to the other and never slow down. You have to pay a little more for a vehicle with an extra fuel tank, but it let you get a lot farther down the road. Secondary insurance policies work in exactly the same way.