Like all insurance contracts, property insurance contracts are made up of declarations, insuring agreements, conditions, exclusions, and definitions.
The first job of the declarations section is to state who is insured, whether it is an individual or a business.
Remember, insurance contracts are personal.
Even though we sometimes talk about insuring homes or other types of property, such as cars, it is the party named in the declarations who is insured, not the property.
The word insured can have a number of different meanings in an insurance policy.
The named insured is the person, business, or other entity named in the declarations to whom the policy is issued.
When there is more than one named insured listed on a policy, the policy may assign a higher level of duties or rights to the first named insured, the person listed first on the Declarations page.
In addition to the named insured, the policy may cover other specifically designated persons, businesses, or entities as insureds under the policy, such as family members. Such designations are usually found in the definition of insured listed in the definitions section of the policy.
In some circumstances, another individual or business may be listed on the declarations as an additional insured-for example, a mortgage company that has an outstanding loan (and therefore an insurable interest) on the property.