Contents Insurance Claim - high risk items/ general contents

hurtbuyer

Hi All,

This is my first post here, so if I do anything wrong please be gentle with me.

After some helpful advice here. I have recently been in the unfortunate position of had a break in. All my wife's jewellery was stolen. I am now in the process of claiming from my home insurance company.
Now unfortunately because of the value of gold having gone up (and my wife having quite a lot of it), I have a feeling that I might be slightly underinsured for the high risk items part (1/3rd) of the contents insurance probably by about 30-40%. However I think my total contents insurance cover is fine as far as I can see.

I have also got reasonable evidence of the jewellery - photos of my wife wearing most of them except a few small bits.

What I want to know is that when considering someone being correctly insured or underinsured, is it the total that matters. Would the insurer be able to say that I am not covered at all. Or would they have to pay upto the maximum of the high risk item cover.

I would appreciate any advice on this.

Many thanks in anticipation.

InsideInsurance

You need to read the terms of your policy.

Best case, they pay you up to the inner limit on the policy.

Worst case, they apply averaging so if you were under insured by 30% they will effectively reduce the limit by 30%

The only way they could avoid paying anything is if they (a) can show you fraudulently took out the policy or (b) that they would not have insured you had you correctly declared the value

hurtbuyer

InsideInsurance wrote: »

You need to read the terms of your policy.

Best case, they pay you up to the inner limit on the policy.

Worst case, they apply averaging so if you were under insured by 30% they will effectively reduce the limit by 30%

The only way they could avoid paying anything is if they (a) can show you fraudulently took out the policy or (b) that they would not have insured you had you correctly declared the value

Thank you very much.

I don't think I did anything fraudulent. Infact I increased (by 40%) the total insured value for contents from the suggested value that came up automatically from the website quoting system.

They definitely would not have not insured because I tried a quote on their website (with 60% higher value) a couple of days back and there was no problem. Believe it or not it actually quoted me a price less than what I paid some months back.

My insurer is esure and I have seen so many horror stories on the net - so I am a bit worried .