Renter's Insurance Liability and "additional insured"

[Anna Milligan]

Our insurance guy is telling us that we should have a requirement in our lease that the renter have renter’s insurance for $500k liability. He said most policies are at $300k, but it’s only an extra $10/yr to bump up to $500k.  He also said to include in the lease that the landlord must be listed as an “additional insured” on the renter’s policy. If the renter does not pay their insurance bill, then we will get notification. 

Has anyone done this?  I've heard of landlords requiring renters insurance, but I've never heard of requiring the Landlord to be an "additional insured" on the policy.  That seems wacky, but I'm new to this and I know nothing.

Thanks!

[Jason Bott]

@Anna Milligan as you can tell from the above responses from around the US, this is a common practice.  The only differentiator is that some states allow landlords to be "Additional Insureds", while other states only allow  "Additional Interest".

The Additional Interest language is meant to give you notice if the policy changes, but you have no rights under the policy.

The Additional Insured language adds you to the renters policy.  In this case, you have rights to files claims under the policy.  Best example would be a slip and fall.  If the tenenat is at fault, You would want to try and have the claim be covered by the renters policy.