Single Item Insurance

maggiesoup

I just got engaged yesterday! Happy me! The ring's value is approx £3000 but when I called my Home Insurance people (Egg) to add to thepolicy they told me the limit on personal single possessions is £2,500 and that I would be better to cancel whole policy and go elsewhere or keep it running (another 5 months) but cover ring separately with someone else.

Can anyone suggest an insurance company who'll quote me just on a single item. I've tried the MSE suggestions such as Moneymarket and Confused but having put in all the information on my property and then contents, when I single out covering one item to the value of £3,000 it says the system has a problem.

Not got the time to call around a dozen individual insurers to get quotes, any ideas anyone?

Thanks

lisyloo

Have you considered either

a) insuring it for £2500.

b) cancelling the policy and getting another one (are there cancellation charges?)

Personally I'd probably just go for underinsuring it for 5 months.
If you are wearing it most of the time then there's not a lot that can happen to it and if it's diamond then that's the hardest substance know to man, so very unlikely to get damaged.

mattymoo

Very odd advice from Egg and if it is correct then they are not much cop as an insurer.

Normally you have a single article limit within a policy and you do not need to specify items up to that amount. With some firms it is £1,000. Egg seem to be saying theirs is £2,500.

For items worth more than this, you need to specify the item. They then calculate the additional premium and add it to the policy pro-rata for the remainder of the policy.

Few mainstream insurers will insure a ring (or any item for that matter) in isolation because it does not give them a spread of risk. You could however try the jeweller to see if they have a policy. Not always the best value but might be your best option if Egg will not get their act together.

peterbaker

I can hardly believe Egg left you in the lurch like that!

I would not be surprised if you were advised incorrectly by someone who doesn't know their policy well enough. Household insurance policies are some of the most complex sold by the insurance industry. You could insure a Jumbo-Jet and understand the policy more easily than some household policies!

Unfortunately I don't have an egg household policy to look at ... I'll have a look on their website to see if they publish a wording which might give clues ...


Meantime it is I think still normal to have at least two limits in a standard Household Contents policy that affect cover on jewellery - first an overall limit on jewellery and valuables which should not exceed a certain percentage of the total contents, and then an item limit.

However, with a "proper" insurer, there is then another important angle
to discuss with a customer like you ... obviously you need cover whilst out and about. That is sometimes called All Risks Personal Possessions cover and would be the same for other portable valuables like a camera or iPod I think.

You can buy "Unspecified All Risk Personal Possessions Cover" with a total limit of say £5,000 as an add-on (by 'endorsement') to your Standard Contents cover. It is the cover you would rely upon to cover lost baggage or effects if you travel and only have simple travel insurance (with tiny limits). I have such. Sometimes there is an inner limit per item in the Unspecified All Risks Personal Possessions add-on, sometimes not.

If Unspecified doesn't hack it with your particular insurer then the sledgehammer to crack it is a Specified All Risks Personal Possessions add-on (by 'endorsement') where the item is specified by name/description and value.

I have now found Egg's wording on their website http://www.egghomeinsurance.com/brochureware/EggPolicyBooklet.pdf

Page 20 of the PDF says this about Egg's 'Personal Possessions' cover (which is actually a form of Unspecified Personal Possessions cover as I described it above):
The Insurer will not pay more in total than the sum insured
Insurer will pay? shown for Personal possessions in Your schedule for any one
claim in this section.
NB: The sum insured under this section is included within the
sum insured for Contents standard cover and is not in addition
to it.
The following limits apply:
For Money £500
For credit cards £500
For any one Valuable £2,500
These are the standard limits. If You have increased any of them
the revised limits which apply to Your Policy will be shown by
Endorsement in Your schedule.
How much will You pay for any one Valuable?
The Insurer will pay, at most, £2,500 for any one Valuable (see
above).

The last half dozen lines are as I would expect ... it is basically an invitation to increase the limits (you should expect an additional premium naturally). I would call Egg again and ask for your query to be escalated to someone who is fully qualified to advise you on your simple request.

If they still say that they cannot accommodate you then refer them to this thread and tell them that someone who qualified as a Fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute in 1984 agrees that their insurance product is therefore poor, and therefore recommends that all Egg customers review their cover with someone better able to offer a sensible product endoresement to match the simple requests of those who own engagement rings!

For the record I don't have Egg House Insurance but I do have Egg Travel Insurance .... I do however check it carefully. As a result I got it completely free last year after I rubbed their noses in another horrendous c*ck-up!

maggiesoup

Hi Peter, thank you so much for going to all this trouble. The guy I spoke to did seem reasonably clued up (i.e didn't sound like a youngster who'd just started) however it still puzzles me in this day and age that a customer who wants to give a company MORE money due to upgrading her chosen product is sent away with the advice that perhaps they should cancel and go elsewhere? It just doesn't make sense.

I will contact them by email tomorrow and see what I get back in writing then I can take it further if needs be.

This is just so inconvenient, especially at a time when I don't really want to be thinking about boring insurance.....more my impending nuptials!!!

peterbaker

No trouble at all really maggie ... you are right, it IS boring - I gave it up ages ago! But rather sadly perhaps, old habits die hard and it only took me a couple of minutes to jump to the right page in their policy.

Hope you have better luck with them tomorrow!