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Your jewellery’s value is much greater than just what it cost to purchase. If you want to protect your jewellery, you can take out specialist jewellery insurance. Another option is portable contents insurance, where you can cover your bling plus other things like your camera and laptop! Compare insurance options to figure how best to take care of those extra special pieces that are close to your heart.
Let’s start with the facts: an individual piece of jewellery can carry a hefty price tag (if the “Heart of the Ocean” from Titanic was real, it would be estimated to be worth a cool $300 million). It makes sense that a collection of jewellery can add up to a sum ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
Beyond that, it’s no secret that jewellery has an emotional significance as well as a financial one. It represents connections to loved ones, relationships and important life events. If you were to lose your engagement ring, would you have enough cash lying around to buy it again?
Even if you feel confident that your home is a safe haven for your jewellery, this not a guarantee. In 2017, there were 225,900 burglaries in Australia, which is roughly 1 every 3 minutes. Beyond this, there are the inevitable situations beyond your control, like loss or damage, that make the importance of jewellery insurance pretty clear.
If you already have home and contents insurance, all you need to do is upgrade your cover and add portable contents insurance (sometimes known as personal effects cover) to insure jewellery and watches when you are outside the home.
With basic portable contents insurance, you aren’t required to describe your items or disclose their value. However, the limits on these “unspecified” portable effects policies tend to be pretty low and won’t necessarily cover the full worth of the items you need to replace. As an example, let’s say you’ve got cover with a $7,000 claim limit and need to replace a necklace worth $4,000, but there’s a $1,500 limit on the individual value you are able to obtain for each item. In this case, you wouldn’t be covered for the full worth of the item.
Should this be the case, you might opt instead for “specified” portable effects insurance. This gives specialised quotes based on the value of individual pieces of jewellery. These are generally fairly flexible and will often go as high as needed. For valuable items that you wear outside the home, this means you’ll be covered for:
In practical terms, this means that if your jewellery is stolen from your home, lost while bushwalking or damaged while working, you’ll be covered for its value.
Of course! Remember, your contents policy covers jewellery within the home. If you would like cover that extends to the day-to-day outside the home, you will need to upgrade to portable contents. Whether or not you choose this is up to you. Depending on the value of your individual pieces and jewellery collection overall, you might find that you will actually be better off enlisting the cover of a specialist jewellery insurer.
Drawbacks of insuring your jewellery with portable contents insurance:
Portable contents insurance can be a helpful addition to your cover, but it’s highly dependent on your personal situation. You might find that it’s not the best fit and you should shop around for different specialist services if this is the case. You can also take out separate policies on individual items (for example, engagement rings) if they are of particular value. Just make sure you don’t accidentally double up!
To make sure you end up with the right cover, remember these tips:
Don’t settle for thinking that insurance equals an exact replacement guarantee. To make sure you don’t have any nasty shocks, remember that you need to be pretty clear on a few possible pitfalls.
Picture: Unsplash
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