Insuring Your Valuables

Your valuables are important to you—and insuring your valuables is equally important to prevent serious loss from damage or theft. Whether it be jewelry, watches, or fine arts, many of our clients underestimate the actual value of their collections prior to meeting with us. While determining how much coverage you may need is important, it’s also essential to look at both the type of items to be covered as well as the correct policy to cover the exposures.

The Basics

Standard home, condo, or renters insurance policies include a limited amount of coverage for jewelry and other valuable items. However, many policies limit the dollar amount of coverage for the theft or other covered loss of such items. Though many companies will offer endorsements that can increase these sub limits, they’re often still insufficient to cover the value of the items.

Our Recommendation

In order to properly protect certain types of valuables, we recommend additional coverage through a separate personal articles floater policy. This greatly broadens the definition of a covered loss and also ensures that any claims made against these valuables are kept off of the homeowner’s policy and are not subject to the applicable homeowner’s deductible. If kept on the Homeowner’s policy, these claims can not only affect your ability to place your home coverage, but could also be negatively affecting your home insurance rates.

Scheduled vs Blanket Coverage

A separate personal articles floater policy may be used to provide either scheduled or blanket coverage for your valuable items. It’s important to note the differences to choose which coverage suits you most appropriately:

Scheduled – Items of value are itemized or “scheduled” on a list that includes a brief description and the item’s dollar value. To determine each item’s value, an appraisal or sales receipt is typically required. This will help ensure that, in the event of a covered loss, the amount of insurance is enough to cover the repair, replacement or cash payment of the item. Items scheduled are typically not subject to the policy deductible and have coverage worldwide. In the event of a loss to the scheduled item, you will be reimbursed for the item’s agreed upon value stated in the policy.
Blanket – Blanket coverage offers a specified limit of worldwide coverage over a certain class of items such as jewelry or fine arts, as well as an additional per-item limit. Because we are not insuring each individual item, there is no appraisal necessary to add coverage. Blanket coverage is a convenient way to insure items with no deductible, but also comes with some drawbacks. It’s imperative that you still keep a schedule of items you own under each class of items for your records. If a loss occurs, you may be asked to provide proof of ownership of the item and verification of the item’s value, which can leave you scrambling for old pictures and receipts to provide some sort of a record for the item.

NOTE: Once you have a personal articles floater, it is still important to periodically review your policy’s coverage limits. This will minimize the likelihood of being underinsured due to outdated appraisals or newly acquired items leaving you with inadequate limits of insurance.

The Cost of Coverage

The cost of coverage varies depending upon the item and type of coverage provided, but typically the fee is nominal. Blanket coverage will typically be a bit more expensive than scheduled coverage due to the broader, undefined nature of items covered. Our personal lines team of professionals can provide you with more information about coverage and an estimate for the cost of schedule or blanket coverage for certain items.