When it comes to insuring high-value items, it’s likely that they won’t be covered by ordinary ‘off-the-peg’ insurance policies, which have limited payouts or might not even be eligible to even partly cover your possessions. So what are some high-value items that require their own specific high-value item policies, and what should they be covered for?
Essential High Value Insurance Policies
Insurance Made Personal
High-Value Homes
In case anything goes wrong with your home – be it a flood, fire or freak weather event – then having home insurance can protect you from the damage caused and the cost of repairs. There are a few types of home insurance, but home buildings insurance policies can cover the cost of materials and repairs, and some can even schedule in contractors to fix issues that arise.
Home insurance premiums take a lot into account including the risk in terms of location (for example, premiums for flooring will be higher if your house is built on a flood plain), the age of your property and construction methods implemented, but a regular home buildings policy will only typically look to insure a home that costs a maximum £500,000.
Some providers will differ with this, but there is typically a cut-off point for widely available policy options as there isn’t a risk appetite in larger firms insuring buildings for higher costs. Higher costs will lead to higher payouts, and this isn’t something some insurance providers want to deal with.
It means that for high-value homes such as mansions and country houses, an ordinary home insurance policy wouldn’t accurately reflect the value of your home, and could underestimate the payout required if your home does become damaged.
Sports Cars and Vintage Cars
If you own an expensive sports car or vintage car, then a regular car insurance policy will either leave you with inadequate cover or eye-watering premiums.
When it comes to certain models, some are either very rare, very expensive or a mixture of the two. So when it comes to insuring your car for damages, especially when replacement parts and repairs would be required, it can be a very costly process. Not only do you need to source the part – which could be out of production or bespoke – and find a mechanic who knows how to repair your car.
These are considerations that just wouldn’t be an issue for common production cars, cars which are also worth considerably less in value, which is why tailored high-value policies are recommended to fully-insure your sport or vintage car.
Individual Items and Collections
When it comes to insuring objects in your home, then you might assume that a regular home contents insurance policy will be able to cover items in your house. Because after all, they’re contents in your home and it’s easy to assume that high-value items would be included in this.
However, home contents insurance isn’t designed to cover individual items that have a high value, or collections of items that together come to a high value total. Most home contents policies will have limits on how much they will pay out for a single item, and they’ll also have limits for total payouts too. Single item limits can typically range from £1500 to £2500, whilst maximum limits for all valuables can be capped at a figure like £5000.
Limits are imposed because the risk appetite can be low, and this is likely to apply to one singular item, especially when it’s only part of a home contents policy for example.
Whilst collections are comprised of individual objects that will need to be itemised, in a lot of cases they can count as one singular ‘item’ in a regular policy. For when you have items or collections that are worth more than what a regular policy is willing to pay out, you should look to get bespoke cover for your painting, furniture, jewellery or toy collection.
How We Can Help
When you work with The Yorkshire Broker, we can work with you to create bespoke policies for your high value items, no matter whether it’s a large family home or an extensive coin collection. Because we can work with you to calculate the precise value of your collection, the condition it’s in and where it’s stored/displayed, we can create an accurate and bespoke high-value items insurance policy.
