PPA Bundles Insurance Into Its $323 Membership. ASMP's $335 Membership Includes None, and Can Still Get You Broader Cover.

A photographer shopping for gear cover posted what happened when he called around. He had read a recommendation for Full Frame Insurance, called them, and was told they do not cover car break-ins. So he went elsewhere:

"I did not go with them. I went with RVNA as they are recommended by ASMP"

That sentence contains the assumption this post is about. He treated an association's recommendation as a shortcut to a decision. It is worth checking what the associations actually recommend, and what they actually include, because the two biggest ones answer the insurance question in completely different ways at almost exactly the same price.

The short version:

• PPA's cheapest tier with insurance is $323 a year. ASMP's comparable Professional tier is $335. Twelve dollars apart, and they are not selling the same thing.
• ASMP includes no insurance in any tier. Its published join page lists four tiers and never mentions coverage.
• PPA includes PhotoCare, which is secondary cover capped at $15,000, settled at actual cash value, with a deductible that climbs $250 per claim.
• Every ASMP tier includes full NANPA benefits, and NANPA's gear insurance is underwritten by Chubb and administered by Rand, with a $250 flat deductible and a liberal definition of mysterious disappearance.
• ASMP's own listed insurance partner is Full Frame, whose published FAQ excludes gear "left unattended in vehicles or trailers."

Does ASMP Membership Include Camera Insurance?

No. Not at any tier, and the published join page does not mention insurance once. ASMP's membership page lists four levels:

• Basic Photographer, $100/year
• Beginning Professional, $225/year
• Professional, $335/year
• Leader, $500/year

What the tiers escalate is access to the ASMP Academy, the document library, the legal and business clinic, awards entries and a media badge. Coverage is absent from all four descriptions.

That is not a criticism. ASMP is a trade association that sells professional infrastructure, and it treats insurance the way it treats cameras and printing: as something a partner provides. Its member benefits page carries an Insurance Products category listing exactly two partners, Full Frame Insurance and NPI Insurance, with no coverage detail, no pricing, and no underwriter named on the page itself.

So the honest answer to "what insurance do I get with ASMP" is: none included, two doors pointed at, and you do the reading. Which brings us back to the photographer in the thread, because the door he walked through was a third one.

Does PPA Membership Include Camera Insurance?

Yes, from the $323 Full tier upward, and the inclusion is the entire reason most photographers consider joining. Our PPA membership post sets out the published tiers:

Tier	Annual cost	PhotoCare included?
Full	$323	Yes
Full Plus	$428	Yes
Limited	$183	No
Student	$79	No

The coverage that comes with it has three published characteristics that decide most of the comparison. It is secondary, meaning it sits behind any other policy that responds. It is capped at $15,000. And the base tier settles at actual cash value with a deductible that starts at $250 and rises $250 with each claim, where the upgraded PhotoCare Plus carries a flat $250 and replacement cost on scheduled property, as our deductible post documents.

The structural point is that PPA has made the insurance decision for you and folded it into one invoice. For a photographer who wants the membership anyway and has a modest kit, that convenience is real. It is also why the comparison people search for is framed wrongly.

PPA vs ASMP: What You Actually Get for About the Same Money

You are not comparing two insurance products. You are comparing a bundle against a referral, and the prices being nearly identical makes that easy to miss.

	PPA Full	ASMP Professional
Annual cost	$323	$335
Insurance included	Yes, PhotoCare	No
Who underwrites it	Not published	n/a, you buy from a partner
Equipment limit	$15,000	Whatever you buy
Primary or secondary	Secondary	Primary, if you buy a real policy
Settlement, base tier	Actual cash value	Depends on the policy you buy
Deductible, base tier	$250, rising $250 per claim	Depends on the policy you buy
Mysterious disappearance	PhotoCare Plus only	Depends on the policy you buy
Named insurance partners	n/a, it is in-house	Full Frame, NPI
Other association benefits included	PPA's own	Full access to NANPA benefits

The row that decides most cases is "primary or secondary." PPA's PhotoCare sits behind your homeowners or business policy. If you have no other cover, secondary cover is the cover. If you do, you are paying for something that may never respond first.

The row most people never see is the last one.

The ASMP Route Nobody Mentions: NANPA, Chubb, and a Liberal Disappearance Clause

Every ASMP tier, including the $100 Basic one, lists "Full Access to NANPA Benefits." That matters because NANPA has an insurance arrangement and PPA's competitor set does not usually include it in the comparison.

NANPA's published member benefit page describes:

"photography insurance underwritten by Chubb and administered by Rand Insurance in the US"

with, for members:

"NANPA members can get policies with a low $250 per occurrence deductible"

and Canadian members routed to Front Row Insurance Brokers instead. The page also notes that Chubb's definition of mysterious disappearance is a liberal one.

That last point is the whole reason this route is worth knowing about. Our mysterious disappearance post established that this clause is a standard exclusion in inland marine all-risk policies, which is what most dedicated camera policies are, and that it decides any loss with no witness and no broken lock. Our vehicle theft post found that PPA's base PhotoCare pays on proof of forced entry and that the mysterious disappearance wording appears only on PhotoCare Plus, the $428 tier.

So the two routes land in different places on the clause that matters most:

• Via PPA, you reach a liberal disappearance position by upgrading from $323 to $428.
• Via ASMP, at $335 or even at $100, you reach a Chubb-underwritten policy described as liberal on exactly that clause, and you pay the premium separately on top.

Neither is automatically cheaper. The point is that "ASMP includes no insurance" is not the same as "ASMP leaves you worse off", and a comparison that stops at the bundle misses it entirely. One caveat worth stating plainly: the NANPA page carries a 2021 publication date with a 2026 update, and this site's own experience is that association insurance arrangements change quietly. Confirm the underwriter is still Chubb before joining anything on the strength of it.

ASMP's Own Insurance Partner Excludes the Loss Most Photographers Actually Have

Here is the uncomfortable part of the referral model. Of the two insurance partners ASMP lists, Full Frame is the one whose wording we have read, and on vehicle theft it is the narrowest in our clause reference. Its FAQ states:

"theft of unattended equipment, or equipment left unattended in vehicles or trailers is not covered."

And on the broader clause:

"Mysterious disappearances are not covered. So, if your gear is left unattended or unsecured and it is stolen, it's not typically covered."

An ASMP member who takes the association's benefits page at face value and clicks the first insurance partner arrives at a policy that does not pay when a bag is taken from a car, however the thief got in. An ASMP member who instead follows the NANPA benefit arrives at Chubb. Same membership, same $335, opposite answers on the most common way photographers lose gear.

This also quietly corrects the thread that opened this post. The photographer said he chose RVNA because ASMP recommends them. ASMP's current published benefits page lists Full Frame and NPI, not RVNA, which is the same company he had just rejected for the car break-in exclusion. We cannot say what ASMP recommended when he looked, and association partner lists change. What we can say is that the recommendation he acted on is not the one the association publishes today, and he would have been better served by reading the exclusion than by reading the endorsement.

So Which One Should You Join?

Join PPA if you want the insurance decision made for you, your kit is comfortably under $15,000, and you either have no other policy or do not mind that the cover is secondary. The $323 is genuinely convenient and the convenience is the product.

Join ASMP if you already have, or intend to buy, a real primary policy, and you want the membership for the legal clinic, the document library and the business infrastructure. Then price the NANPA route against whatever else you are quoted, and read the disappearance and vehicle clauses before you sign, not after.

Join neither for the insurance alone. At $323 and $335 these are professional memberships that happen to touch insurance, and a photographer whose only goal is covering a $20,000 kit can usually buy a better-fitting standalone policy without joining anything, as the business-policy route in our vehicle theft post shows.

What should decide it, in every case, is the clause rather than the brochure. Our policy clause reference sets out what each carrier publishes and what policyholders report, side by side. To compare providers more broadly, our comparison table covers what current providers actually offer, and our methodology explains how we evaluate them.