Contents sum insured information

The Contents Sum Insured has to be sufficient to cover the cost of replacing everything within your home, in case, for example, there was a fire and everything was destroyed.

You should calculate the appropriate sum insured by adding up the value of every item within your home. This is usually a matter of going round each room and writing down the value of the Contents.

You can then enter the value of each item into this contents calculator, which will provide you with a total and this is the Sum Insured that you should ask for.

Personal Possessions

You should consider the value of the possessions that you are likely to take out of the home at any one time, say on a family holiday (watches, cameras etc). This is usually an optional extra with most insurance policies so you must ask when you buy your insurance.

Specified personal possessions

We have already discussed the fact that a you may wish to cover certain possessions against loss or damage whilst they are out of the home. Personal possessions cover will achieve this, however, the insurer will normally limit the value of a single article. For example the Insurer may say that they will only cover items which are worth less than £1,000 each.

You may have some items which are higher in value than this Single Article Limit, perhaps an expensive camcorder, watch or piece of jewellery. In this case cover can be arranged but only if the articles are specified during the quotation process.

Contents accidental damage

The accidental damage extension for Contents means that if Accidental loss or damage occurs then it will be covered.

Examples of accidental damage to Contents would include spilling paint on the carpet, children putting things into the video recorder or dropping  a camera on to the floor.  The cover is extremely wide.

Accidental damage cover will normally substantially increase the Contents Premium.

It is important to note that the accidental damage cover still only applies to the Contents of the home, it does not cover articles which are taken out. If cover is required for articles outside the home then Personal possessions cover is needed.

Contents - Valuables

Most insurers will regard certain 'high risk' items in the home as Valuables. These will usually include items of gold, silver, furs, jewellery, pictures, stamp collections and the like. The Policy wording will provide a full list.

In a standard policy the insurer will normally limit the total cover available for all Valuables to a certain level, perhaps 30% of the Sum Insured and within that limit they will normally stipulate that no single item can have a value greater than say 5% of the Sum Insured. So, for example, if your contents were insured for £20,000 up to £6,000 of that amount could be valuable items, with no single item valued at more than £1,000

If you have valuable items which need to be covered then it is best to specify these during the quotation process so that additional cover can be arranged.

The insurer may charge an additional Premium for items of a higher value and or require further security to be arranged (perhaps locks or an alarm). The insurer may also require that a recent valuation is obtained.