Insurance broker for BeirutInsurance broker for Beirut

The insurers are here, so this is where files are decided

Beirut is where almost every licensed insurance company in Lebanon keeps its head office. Underwriting, medical approvals, motor assessment and the claims departments all sit in the capital, which means that whatever your policy says on paper, the people applying it to your file are working from an office in the city.

That is a broker's natural ground. We put the same specification in front of several of those companies at once and bring back offers that can genuinely be compared, rather than one quotation with nothing to measure it against. When something goes wrong later, we are the ones following it up with the department that holds the file, so you are not being passed between extensions on your own time.

Traffic, parking and what they do to a motor policy

Beirut driving produces a particular kind of claim. There is little open road and not much speed, but there is constant low-speed contact: bumpers in stationary queues, mirrors on narrow streets, kerb and pillar damage in underground car parks, and cars left on a public street overnight because there was nowhere else to leave them. Individually the damage is often small. It is the frequency that decides what a policy costs and whether it earns its premium.

That changes the arithmetic behind the usual questions. A high deductible looks cheap until you claim twice in a year and pay it twice. The choice between material damage cover and full all-risk stops being abstract once you know how often your car is likely to be touched and where it sleeps. The compulsory third-party policy every driver has to hold pays nothing towards any of it, and a surprising number of people in the city discover that only after a scrape.

Hospitals, classes and networks

Beirut holds the densest concentration of private hospitals in the country, and it is easy to read that as access. It is not. What decides whether a hospital admits you on your card, and into which room, is the class of your health plan and the network attached to it, not how close the building is to your flat.

So the questions worth asking before you buy are which hospitals in the city the network actually includes, what the annual ceiling is, what you pay yourself on consultations and medication, and how long the waiting period runs for pre-existing conditions or maternity. We set those figures side by side across insurers rather than quoting one headline premium. Companies with staff in Beirut face the same questions at a larger scale, and a group plan is usually where the answers improve.

Apartments, contents and the building around them

Most homes in Beirut are apartments inside buildings somebody else manages, and building cover and contents cover are underwritten separately. It is common to find a building insured through the syndic while nothing inside the flats is, or a tenant assuming the landlord's policy would replace their own furniture and electronics. It would not.

The other recurring problem is water. In a stack of apartments a leak two floors up becomes your ceiling, and whether it is paid depends on the perils named in the policy and on liability between neighbours rather than on who is obviously at fault. Fire and allied perils are the base of any property cover here, natural perils are usually an extension rather than something included by default, and the sum insured has to reflect real replacement cost, because insuring for less reduces every claim in proportion.

Companies, liability and staff

The capital is where most Lebanese companies are registered and where most of their people work, and company cover is rarely one policy. An office or a shop needs its contents and stock insured. Anyone receiving the public needs liability towards them. Professional firms need cover for advice that turns out to be wrong. Employers need workmen compensation, and increasingly need a group medical and life plan simply to hire and keep people.

Arranging those together is the point. It makes the gaps between policies visible, which is where uninsured losses usually hide, and it lets renewal dates be brought into line so you are not negotiating in four separate months of the year with four different companies.

Life and travel, arranged the same way

The two covers people postpone are the two that cost least to get right early. Term life protection sized against a mortgage, school fees or a few years of household income is cheaper than most people expect, and naming beneficiaries correctly matters as much as the sum insured. Travel cover is mainly medical, and where a Schengen visa is involved the consulate checks both the medical limit and that the policy runs for the whole stay.

How we work with clients in the capital

We are based in Zouk Mikael and we serve Beirut as an area rather than from a branch inside it. In practice most of a policy can be arranged without either of us moving: we collect what is needed, request options from several insurers, and send back a comparison you can read in your own time. When a document has to be signed, a car has to be seen or a claim needs someone present, we drive down.

Our brokers bring over ten years in the Lebanese market between them. That mostly shows up in the questions we ask before you buy rather than in anything printed on a certificate, which is the part of the job that decides whether a claim is straightforward later.