Contents insurance may come in very handy if your house suffers various forms of natural disasters, fires or the attention of burglars.
Here are a few points that may be worth keeping in mind:
- some policies may contain what is called new-for-old replacement of contents – that basically means that your items will be replaced by new equivalent items;
- other cheap home insurance quotes may include only the typically cheaper market valuation replacement, which basically means the cost of your items lost will be calculated based upon their present day second-hand value (remember in insurance that what may prove cheap for someone else may not prove cheap for you);
- you may find some contents insurance where the insurer will allow you to choose between the two forms of cover, perhaps saving a little on your premium if you opt for market value replacement;
- some specific contents may be excluded by your policy – that may include things such as high value jewellery, antiques above a certain value, fine art, cash, rare and valuable documents etc;
- if you have an items or items that individually are of very high value, it may be a sound idea to discuss the specifics with your insurer as they may put together a special schedule covering such items to ensure they’re covered – though that may also result in additional cost;
- some general household contents insurance may not cover your commercial items and equipment, if you work from home or store goods there – so if you store stock and occupation-related tools in your garage or spare room, you may wish to check with your insurer to make sure that protection is in place (once again, a typically modest extra premium may be involved);
- contents cover insurance may require that you take certain common-sense security steps to protect your home, for example, you may be required to ensure that deadlocks are fitted to doors and that windows are also lockable – some policies may offer financial incentives if you install an alarm system;
- the position with respect to external items (garden furniture, tools stored in sheds, plants in pots etc) may be complicated, with some policies covering and others excluding – there may be no alternative but to read the policy detail to ascertain what is the case with the policy you’re considering;
It might also be worthwhile to look carefully at what a policy offers with regards to other people’s property in your home – for example, if you offer to temporarily store some of a relative’s possessions while they are moving home, not all contents insurance policies will necessarily cover such circumstances.
