Farm Shield Crop Risk Protection
Farm Shield Mutual offers crop risk protection as an alternative to insurance to WA Farmers.
How Crop Risk Protection works
Farm Shield Crop Risk Protection provides a Period of Protection starting from when you accept the quote, through to the end of transporting your crop after harvest.
Crop Risk Protection is available only to WA Farmers growing wheat, barley, lupins, field peas, oats and canola. It provides protection from the impact of hail, fire and lightning.
Members can lodge any claim with the Mutual to have the Board consider their claim.
What's a claims hurdle?
Instead of an excess, Farm Shield Crop Risk Protection allows farmers to choose a Claim Hurdle. Unlike an excess, with a hurdle the Member does not need to pay the first loss up to the hurdle level if the claim exceeds the hurdle. Once the claim clears the hurdle, the whole amount is considered for settlement by the Board.
You select the claims hurdle by choosing the percentage of the yield you are willing to risk before the claim is considered. You can select from 0%, 5%, 10%, 15% or 20%, depending on the type of crop. (E.g. Canola has a minimum of 10%.)
In the event of a claim, you notify Farm Shield. If the assessed value of the loss is greater than claims hurdle value, the Board considers the full amount.
If the loss is less than the hurdle amount, the Board still consider the claim, yet it may be declined.
You do not need to pay anything for the claim to progress through its assessment. There is no co-payment for making a claim if it has been accepted by the Board.
Compare this to the same scenario with an insurance excess; the nominated percentage is the amount you must pay for your claim to progress. It's like a co-payment for your claim.
An example:
Hurdle is 5% of a yield = $10,000
If the cost to remediate is $9,000:
The Board would still consider it yet, given the hurdle, it could likely be declined.
If the cost to remediate is $11,000:
The board would consider the full $11,000.
Member pays nothing to have the claim considered.
Designed with Farmers
Farm Shield Crop Risk Protection has been designed with farmers and considers the needs of farm operations, the grain market, and fire risk mitigation practices.
To start a quote, you will need to provide your farm address and map your farm. This can be done via uploading you farm boundary files (KML, SHP, ISOXMP, KMZ, XML of ZIP) or manually drawing approximate boundaries using your mouse on any desktop computer.
Then, you can upload that file into Farm Shield to map your paddocks as part of the risk protection quoting process.