Home / Glossary / Provisional cover

Provisional cover, in the boat insurance glossary

Boat insurance term, area: Contract

Provisional cover, also called interim cover, is protection that applies before the policy document has been issued and before the first premium has been paid. In law it is a separate short contract an insurer has to grant on purpose, and many yacht and boat wordings do not contain it at all. They work instead with an inception date written into the policy document, and that date may be set earlier than the day the contract was concluded. It matters when a boat changes hands on a Saturday and the paperwork follows the next week: what counts is the inception date, not the date on the document.

What to check: Two questions for your own contract: which inception date is written into the policy document, and may it be set before the day the contract was concluded? And what happens to protection for an incident that occurs before the first premium reaches the insurer?

More terms