At Hicks Insurance, we do a full review to make sure there are no gaps in your policy. We want you to understand all the extra coverages you’re able to purchase and decide which ones are important to you and fit your needs.

There’s a common belief that if you’ve been with the same carrier for ten years and never had a problem, your coverage must be in good shape. That assumption is the single most expensive one we see clients make. A policy that hasn’t been reviewed in a decade isn’t a stable policy — it’s a policy that’s slowly drifted out of sync with your house, your cars, your liability exposure, and the way carriers underwrite today. Reviewing your policies for gaps and overlaps isn’t about finding fault with your last agent; it’s about confirming the coverage still matches the life it was written for.

What a gap looks like versus what an overlap looks like

Gaps and overlaps are two different problems with different fixes. A gap is a missing coverage — something a claim could trigger that isn’t on the policy. An overlap is paying for the same protection twice across two different policies, usually because something was added years ago and never removed when a newer endorsement was bundled in.

Common gaps we find on a typical home and auto review:

• Dwelling limit below today’s rebuild cost
• No water-backup or sewer-and-drain endorsement
• Jewelry above the standard $1,500 sub-limit, never scheduled
• A household driver missing from the auto policy
• Liability limits on the home and auto that don’t match an existing umbrella
• No umbrella policy when assets clearly warrant one

Common overlaps we untangle:

1. A standalone jewelry policy duplicating a scheduled-articles endorsement already on the home policy
2. Towing coverage on the auto policy plus a paid roadside membership
3. Rental reimbursement on auto plus a credit-card travel benefit you already use
4. A business-pursuits endorsement on home that’s been replaced by a commercial policy elsewhere

How we actually run the review

We start with your declarations pages for every active policy — home, auto, umbrella, life, and anything commercial. We read them in order from broadest to narrowest: liability first, then property, then optional endorsements. Then we ask about anything that’s changed in the last three years — kids, drivers, renovations, side businesses, toys, travel. That sequence is what surfaces the gaps; carriers don’t call to ask if your roof was replaced last summer, but it matters to how the policy responds.

Why this is harder to do alone

Reading a declarations page tells you what’s covered. It doesn’t tell you what isn’t. Most exclusions live in the policy form, not the dec page, and they vary by carrier. When we look at fifteen or twenty different carriers’ forms regularly, patterns emerge — one carrier excludes service-line damage by default, another bundles it in; one carrier writes roofs at replacement cost up to twenty years, another caps it at ten. Without that comparative view, you don’t know what you’re missing. That’s why we suggest reading our piece on the benefits of an independent agency and our explanation of how many carriers we work with before settling for the first comparison you see.

Pulling it all together

Once we’ve identified the gaps and overlaps, we don’t push you into changes. We hand you a short summary — usually one page — that shows what’s missing, what’s duplicated, and what each fix would cost. You decide which ones matter to your household. We’ve also put together a deeper look at how to tell if you have the right coverage and a related guide on gaps to watch for when switching that pair well with this review process. When you’re ready, start a personal insurance review and we’ll go through your policies together.