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Best Drone Insurance

AtomskLabs

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Hello!

I am in need of getting some new insurance for my drone work. Anyone have any good suggestions, if so please share!
 
Glad you asked. I am just starting the annual renewal process. I currently have 1M Liability Commercial Insurance and the cost is $500. My question to folks is I need to add a second craft to my policy. My agent says the premium will double for the second Drone. I believe I saw someone mention on the forum at some point a carrier that provides 1M General Liability for multiple drones for $800?
I use PPA(Professional Photographers of America). You have to join to get their drone coverage. Annual membership is $320. That does NOT cover drones and payload. You have to buy a separate Drone policy with it. I have $12,000 coverage on my M200 right now. Total annual policy coverage on Hull plus equipment from them is $600. That is cost of membership and Hull/payload coverage. Covers any damage, crash or theft.

Sorry meant to add the Commercial Liability is through Aero-Global an aviation agent that I think I got from this forum. Glad to provide the agents name/number if interested
 
Glad you asked. I am just starting the annual renewal process. I currently have 1M Liability Commercial Insurance and the cost is $500. My question to folks is I need to add a second craft to my policy. My agent says the premium will double for the second Drone. I believe I saw someone mention on the forum at some point a carrier that provides 1M General Liability for multiple drones for $800?
I use PPA(Professional Photographers of America). You have to join to get their drone coverage. Annual membership is $320. That does NOT cover drones and payload. You have to buy a separate Drone policy with it. I have $12,000 coverage on my M200 right now. Total annual policy coverage on Hull plus equipment from them is $600. That is cost of membership and Hull/payload coverage. Covers any damage, crash or theft.

Sorry meant to add the Commercial Liability is through Aero-Global an aviation agent that I think I got from this forum. Glad to provide the agents name/number if interested
Awesome! I'll look into for sure. Is the 1M through PPA and do you add the extra Drone policy through them as well? How much is it all in annually for the 1M Liability Commercial Insurance + PPA Membership + Hull/Payload Coverage? As of right now I wont be flying any payload but would like to have my drone covered and want to be covered for liability reasons when shooting on jobs.

Thanks for your response!
 
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Awesome! I'll look into for sure. Is the 1M through PPA and do you add the extra Drone policy through them as well? How much is it all in annually for the 1M Liability Commercial Insurance + PPA Membership + Hull/Payload Coverage? As of right now I wont be flying any payload but would like to have my drone covered and want to be covered for liability reasons when shooting on jobs.

Thanks for your response!
PPA does not have liability for for Drones. Just general photography liability. I use an Aviation Insurance Agent. 1M liability is $500 Annually. The Hull coverage total cost $600. That covers Drone and XTDuo payload to replace at current cost. Glad to give you the Insurance email for comparison if you PM me. John
 
Update on Insurance renewal. My usual liability carrier updated the 1M general liability coverage for a second drone. Cost doubled. New annual premium for "basic liability" with two drones is $900. That covers just me flying these specific two drones. Also covers me for borrowed/rented drone. SkyWatch has 1M annual policy for two drones at $650.
I also checked to see how much Hull coverage would be with Skywatch. Currently I have $12,000 worth of Hull damage coverage for Matrice 200 and Flir XT2Duo. Skywatch would have been $1600.00 annual coverage. My current policy is with Professional Photographers of America and cost $600. You have to join as a member and then get an additional policy as a member through LocktonAfinity. Caveat. PPA now has a premium annual membership that includes 1M general liability. It does NOT include drone Pilots and drone activity. Just general photography. For drones you have to purchase general annual membership, $323.00 and then apply through them for the additional Hull policy. Still cheapest deal I have been able to find. Except new drones like my Mavic 3T Enterprise. DJI Enterprise basic coverage is cheaper annually, but only think they sell for the first two years
 
That’s a great question. It’s general liability, for a 107 pilot, which by the FAA definition of the License is Commercial. I’m going to review my membership info and get back to you.
thanks for looking. I took look on the website and only see a link to Global-Aero for drone insurance. That seems to the underwriter for most Drone Insurance I believe.
 
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Another possible option that people may want to look into SkyWatch | #1 Aviation and Drone Insurance
I believe they even have a premium reduction for safe flying
Just received email from /skyWatch. They recently changed their Insurance carrier and agent said the safe flyer has been added to the default new premium for all customers. SW is still the best price I have found. Thanks
 
Just received email from /skyWatch. They recently changed their Insurance carrier and agent said the safe flyer has been added to the default new premium for all customers. SW is still the best price I have found. Thanks
So then overall to just get an all encompassing insurance (liability and protection for the drone itself) is SkyWatch? I will give them a shout and see if I can talk to an agent.

I appreciate all of the feed back. Thank you for being an awesome community!
 
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SkyWatch had the best price for general liability for 1-2 drones flying commercially. Price was $665. I priced out Hull coverage. M200 and an XT2Duo sensor. Total replacement cost currently is $12,000.00. SkyWatch quoted me $1500, but PPA was $600. For PPA, you have to be a member, which is $323 annually. You are then eligible to get Hull coverage at a discount. Hull for the 12k was $283. Total annual subscription for Hull coverage was $600 from PPA and Liability for two drones was $665 from SkyWatch.

I will add that the policy from my exiting carrier and the new quote from from SkyWatch was from the same underwriter and almost exactly word for word except, my current carrier quote had the two Drones listed, and the SkyWatch quote under where the Drones cover category said, "Any drone registered and operated by the Insured under 55lbs" including rentals
 
I got quotes from a company called BWI, Skywatch, as well as the agent that covers my plane. Interestingly, all of the quotes are underwritten by Global Aerospace, but the premiums varied from $400 (BWI) to $466 (Skywatch). This is for a $500K policy for a 1-year term.
 
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Sorry about being vague in my last post, as my posts occasionally get deleted when I mention the name. Therefore, let me give you a brief rundown about drone insurance. First off, I'm a licensed 107 drone operator, manned airplane pilot (Commercial, Multi, & CFI), and 18-year aircraft insurance Underwriting Executive.

There are multiple options and sources to obtain drone insurance and depending on your operation and may require different avenues to do so. These options are:

1) Use an insurance broker to obtain an annual drone policy from an aviation carrier or general liability carrier.

2) Add coverage to an existing business policy or homeowners policy depending if you are operating commercially or for recreational purposes. Some policies may exclude aviation or drone operations and other do not.

3) Use a usage-based drone insurance app to obtain insurance per hour, daily, monthly, or annually. This can be useful and a better option for cash flow purposes instead of putting up a large some of money out of the gate. There are only three options at the time of this post: AirModo, Skywatch, Droneinsurance.com

Let’s focus on option #3 above for now. Although on the front end these mobile apps may all seem similar, there are differences that may or may not be important to you. Skywatch is a tech company and insurance broker who places business on your behalf with one specific aircraft insurance company. Skywatch built their own app and manage it on a daily basis. They can change insurance carriers whenever they want and make money by taking a percentage commission from policies sold.

AirModo was developed and is owned by an insurance company. There are no third parties taking commissions per se and is somewhat a different business model then others. However, on the front end a user may not care if there is a broker involved or not. Plainly put premiums tend to be less as they don’t have another mouth to feed. AirModo is available to both commercial users up to $25 million in liability limits and $2 million for hobby / recreation users. Only liability options are currently offered, and therefore you are not able to insure 1st party drone damage. This may be a showstopper for some but I’ve only seen about 30% of drone operators buy 1st part physical damage coverage since 2016.

Droneinsurance.com is a third-party website company using a general liability (not aviation specific) insurers paper. There are additional fees (such as surplus lines fees) added to your policy premiums because of the way they are set-up.

Recently, one usage-based drone insurance app, Verifly, closed their doors. They too were a tech company (aka Thimble) and an insurance broker placing business with one specific carrier. This has left many drone operators looking for drone insurance quickly in order to satisfy certain jobs they have committed to.

Long story short is that there isn’t a one size fits all option for drone insurance. It largely depends on your size of operation, cash flow situation, and how often you need insurance. From my vantage point, I suggest using an aviation type insurer as they have written manuscript policies specific to drone operations and know how to handle aviation type claims. Your average homeowners or business insurers have no idea what a drone is or what you do with them.
 
Excellent write-up, DroneInsuranceDude. I did try Airmodo, but their 1 year policy was significantly higher than what I got with BWI, so for now, sticking with that option. Hopefully we'll see some more competition soon.
 
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Thanks and no problem. Just make sure you compare apples-to-apples with drone insurance. Some folks may only offer $500K in coverage compared to others providing $1 million for almost the same price. AirModo has a side-by-side comparison listed on their website that may be helpful to some. Also, operators who need a certificate of insurance (COI) frequently and quickly often chose to use an app based insurance product so they can request and receive a certificate instantly themselves instead of waiting for a broker to request one from the carrier. Mobile apps are 24/7/265 and brokers are usually 9am-5pm only 5 days per week....
 
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