Umbrella insurance refers to insuring more than one property as oppose to insuring only one. For example the owner might get a discount for insuring both his house and car rather than insuring them with separate policies because it might cost more. Typically, an umbrella policy is pure liability coverage over and above the coverage afforded by the regular policy, and is sold in increments of one million dollars. The term "umbrella" is used because it covers liability claims from all policies underneath it, such as autos and homeowners policies. For example, if you have an auto insurance policy with liability limits of $500,000 and a Homeowners policy with a limit of $300,000, then with a million dollar umbrella, your limits become in effect, $1,500,000 on the auto policy and $1,300,000 on a homeowners liability claim. Umbrella policies are mainly used by those who have sizable unencumbered assets, such as a home with a large amount of equity to ensure that even a catastrophic claim will not allow those assets to be placed at risk.