It’s a little known fact that home insurance can actually protect your assets and home contents away from home.
A standard home and contents insurance policy will generally cover clients for the costs of rebuilding and repairing a home, repairing or replacing contents for insurable events like flood, fire and theft.
Contents can include personal items, from designer sunnies and phones to computers and portable gaming devices, in addition to fixed furniture and fittings. You can also elect to cover specific valuable items (such as jewellery and artwork) for an agreed value in your home and contents policy.
Some of these personal items are often not at “home” when an insurable event occurs (for example theft) and depending on the wording of your policy, you could be entitled to claim for the loss.
That’s exactly what happened for one of our valued clients who was overseas at beginning of this year and visited what they thought was a reputable jeweller…
So what’s the story?
The jeweller talked our client into upgrading the diamond in his wife’s ring (a listed item under their Home and Contents policy) and charged a significant amount for the work and new stone.
When the client returned home they had the ring revalued and were horrified to learn that they had been swindled. The ring, which was originally valued at $165,000, was now worth just $30,000.
The new diamond was not per the valuation provided by the jeweller and was a drilled and fracture-filled diamond of extremely poor quality. These flaws were not visible to the naked eye.
The client had been defrauded and pursued all available avenues to bring the thief to justice but with no success.
How we helped…
Allsafe assisted the client in lodging a claim with their contents insurer, Chubb, and after approximately 30 days of consideration and investigation, Chubb confirmed that they would accept the loss and have processed a settlement to the client in the order of $141,000.00.
The swift decision and claims service from this insurer was exceptional!
Chubb’s policy wording is one of the rarer and broader wordings on the market. Even with this wording, the loss was not an easy call for them to interpret. On the basis that the client was evidently deceived and defrauded, and Chubb took very little time in accepting the loss and granting indemnity.
Chubb is known as a high-end Home Insurer and the quality of their wording and this claims experience is one example of how important it is to check the policy fine print and avoid the pitfalls of “price” shopping.
The moral of the story…
When you have valuable items that need insuring, it pays to have good insurance!
The information in this article is to be regarded as general advice. Your personal objectives, needs and financial circumstances were not taken into account when preparing this website content. We recommend that you consider the suitability of this general advice, in respect of your objectives, financial situation and needs before acting on it. You should obtain and consider the relevant product disclosure statement and Financial Services Guide from Allsafe Insurance Brokers before making any decision to purchase a financial product.
