The Weirdest Insurance Policies You Can Actually Take Out

Your car is covered, your house is covered... Heck, there's even insurance for your health (and your pet's!). Here, though, are some of the oddball insurance policies you almost definitely don't have.

Insurance, in some ways, is an investment. You're hedging your bets against something dreadful happening to your car, your house, your business, your health... You get the picture. But while all those insurance policies make sense – after all, assets don't get more valuable than your wheels, home, work and wellbeing – there are other risks that... well... Let's just say the chances of them actually happening are so remote that it's a surprise there's even insurance cover against them.

Still...

Hole-in-one Insurance

Woohoo! You've just aced the par 3 at the local golf course. You're the toast of your fourball, your name's on the golf club's Hall of Fame... and you're in the hole for a few hundred bucks, because – as per tradition – drinks are on you at the clubhouse bar. Good news is that some South African insurers sell cover for exactly this... and some Hippo partners even have it as an automatic part of their home insurance cover. (See? It pays to read the small print.)

Change of Heart Insurance

What happens when Mister Right turns into Mister Oh Hell No? You cancel the wedding – and in the process, you lose a bundle on venue and wedding dress deposits, flowers, rings, photographers, invitations, blah blah blah. Somebody's gotta pay for all that, and it's unlikely to be your ex-fiancé. That's where specialised insurance comes in handy, covering parents (and other unlucky sponsors) for a wedding that gets cancelled due to a change of heart.

Multiple-birth Insurance

Good news: you're pregnant! Better news: it's twins! Bad news: babies cost a fortune, and twins cost double. That's why some US insurers offer a financial safety net, helping to cover the costs of Baby Two. (It's worth considering: by some estimates, one in every 90 births ends up being twins.)

Lottery Insurance

Say a bunch of your employees pool together for a Lotto ticket... and – tata ma chance! – they win. If you're the boss this is pretty much worst-case scenario, because your lucky employees will all quit on the spot and buy mansions in Hawaii.

In 2007, a group of 16 employees (out of a total staff of 75) at a UK company won a combined £7.6 million. That's about R6,65 million each. And while some of the lucky winners chose to stay in their jobs, the company found that (for some strange reason) they didn't seem too keen on working unpaid overtime any more.

That's why some UK insurers sell what's called Lottery Insurance. It does exactly what you think it does, covering employers for losses sustained by their staff (either as individuals or as a group) striking it rich on the Lotto.

Ghost Insurance

Staying in the UK, the landlord of The Royal Falcon Hotel in Suffolk told the BBC in 2002 that he'd taken out insurance against ghosts, because he was worried that the pub's resident poltergeist could hurt customers.

Stop laughing. The Royal Falcon is located right next to an old graveyard in a 500-year-old building that used to be a girls' school. Word on the street (and we're not denying it) is that the place is haunted by a monk who hanged himself after being caught having an affair with one of the pupils.

Pub owner Terry Meggs insisted that he'd seen the naughty monk's ghost shoot glasses along the pub's bar one night. That's why, for an annual premium of £500, he took out an insurance policy that would pay out up to £1 million if the pub's staff or customers happened to be killed or maimed by 'ghosts, poltergeists or other abnormal phenomena' on the premises.

Alien Abduction Insurance

Because America. Yup, some insurers in the US of A promise to cover your costs if you're 'kidnapped by a non-human life form from another planet'. Of course, it's a total gimmick: depending on the policy, your claim will only be paid out if you can provide a detailed description of the abduction incident, video footage of your close encounter and a signed statement from an authorised, on-board alien. Oh, and your $10 million insurance payout will only be paid out in increments of $1 per year, for the next 10 million years.

We're not saying you'll be abducted by ETs, or that you'll hit the Lotto jackpot, but things happen. Use our no-strings, no-hassles platform to compare household insurance quotes, and make sure you're covered for the risk.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or medical advice.