Sunrise Provision

A “sunrise provision” is a clause in an insurance policy that says they’ll cover damage from stuff that happened before the policy was active.

For example, let’s say we switched car insurance companies two months ago. Let’s also say we got into a car accident six months ago—totally not our fault—and then, just last week, some random part fell off the bottom of our car onto our driveway in the middle of the night. We took the car into the shop, and it turns out that part was damaged in the accident six months ago, but never repaired.

If our auto insurance policy has a sunrise provision, that could mean they’ll cover the repairs, even though the accident happened before we were insured with them. Pretty cool, right? Unfortunately, sunrise provisions, like the Bornean orangutan, are slowly going extinct. They’re being replaced by something called sunset provisions, which we think is a pretty fitting name for something taking the place of a sunrise provision.

If we’re curious as to whether any of our insurance policies come with sunrise provisions, we should check the fine print. Might be handy info to know someday.