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Single item insurance

Single item insurance lets you pay less by only insuring important stuff like your phone and laptop.

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Gary Hunter
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With single item insurance, you can cover one or more individual items in your home. It's slightly different from traditional contents insurance because it lets you pick and choose specific items you want to protect, such as your phone, laptop and camera. It can cover you for events including fires, theft or accidental damage.

What is single item insurance?

Single item insurance is a new type of insurance that covers individual items, such as your camera, laptop or phone, rather than whole categories, in the way that contents insurance does. You can insure more than one item and examples of what it can cover include:

Who offers single item insurance?

As its popularity increases, there are now a number of providers offering single item insurance. Some of these providers are:

Is there a difference between single item insurance and portable contents?

Yes. Here's what they both do:

  • Single item insurance. This functions like contents insurance, except it only covers individual items inside your home, as opposed to everything in your home.
  • Portable contents insurance. This protects your items when you take them away from your home. It's usually only available as an add-on with single item and home insurance policies, which means you'll need to pay extra to get it included.

Should I get single item insurance or contents insurance?

Here's the pros and cons of a single item insurance policy.

Pros

  • It's usually cheaper than contents insurance.
  • It's good if you just want to protect a couple of expensive items in your home.

Cons

  • A contents insurance policy can offer much better value for money.
  • A contents insurance policy can cover those items and a lot more (from carpets and curtains to furniture and white-goods).
  • You'll usually still have to pay an excess when you make a single item insurance claim.

What's covered by single item insurance?

Single item insurance generally lets you insure the same items that would ordinarily be covered in a contents insurance policy. These items include:

  • Musical instruments
  • White goods e.g. fridges, ovens etc
  • Sporting and camping equipment
  • Furniture
  • Home audio and visuals
  • Tablets
  • Desktop computers

What's not covered by single item insurance?

There are some items that single item insurance ordinarily won't cover. These include:

  • Motorcycles, vehicles, caravans and trailers
  • Motorised golf buggies or carts
  • Ride-on lawnmowers
  • Mobility scooters
  • Tools, e.g. work equipment such as drills and saws
  • Any items and stock used for your business or profession
  • Gemstones

Bottom line about single item insurance

Single item insurance can be a convenient way to protect specific valuables you own but it's not always the most cost effective option compared to contents insurance – which protects all, not just some, of the items in your home. If you'd like to compare home and contents insurance policies side-by-side, you can head to our home insurance page here.

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