Claims on jewellery insurance - what cash discount?

aroominyork

I am looking at moving our jewellery insurance from TM March to Nationwide, where premiums are about half the cost. I am looking at how claims would be settled and there are pros and cons.

TH March are generally better since, for replacement of bespoke items, we can choose any UK jeweller. But they only work on a replacement basis which creates a problem for sentimental items that we would not want replaced.

Nationwide manage claims through LMG Jewellery who might try to recreate items through their in-house/associated jeweller; otherwise they issue Gemcheck cards to spend in certain jewellers. That latter option might be an advantage for items we do not want replaced. They also said they might give a cash settlement but at a discounted value. My question is whether anyone has experience of what the discount on a cash settlement tends to be on jewellery claims?

TELLIT01

The cash settlement amount is likely to carry a considerable discount as the insurer will only be paying trade prices for any replacement jewellery.  I don't know, but would expect a discount of at least 25%.  Only the insurer can tell you the actual figure.

Sandtree

It'll represent whatever corporate discount they receive 

When I worked for an insurer with a reasonable line in Home insurance we got employee discounts of 20% on jewelry from their preferred supplier (a number mirrored the corporate discount to employees). If you are looking at a more specialist company with a larger portfolio so more negotiating power 20-30% discount wouldnt seem unachievable.

They can only apply the discount however if they are able to provide a like for like item so if you have a large collection of Cartier "Love" items and their network do not stock Cartier or anything equivalent then they cannot discount the cash.

Brie

Have you ever had to claim for jewellery?  It may not work out quite as you expect.

We had a burglary years back when we had our household insurance through LV.  We didn't have anything specific mentioned about jewellery in the policy (which obviously may be a huge difference) as no one item was of significant value as far as we were aware.  Net result was that we totted up how much had been stolen (all those silver earrings purchased at ?£15£ a pair over a number of years, a couple of FiL's old swiss watches, Gran's opal earrings etc) and gave them a total value of £5k which they agreed to.  All we needed to do was submit receipts from random jewellery shops and they refunded us to that value.  After buying an expensive watch, a nice diamond ring and some lesser items we were told it didn't matter what the what was as long as it was from a suitable shop.  So we bought a nice old fashioned quarter chiming wall clock.  And after that they said we could take the rest as cash.  I think at that point they simply wanted to close the claim.

I rang them again when some items were recovered by the police (Gran's earrings!) expecting we might need to repay something and was told it didn't matter and they considered the claim to be satisfactorily closed.

Sandtree

Brie said:

I rang them again when some items were recovered by the police (Gran's earrings!) expecting we might need to repay something and was told it didn't matter and they considered the claim to be satisfactorily closed.

If items are recovered they are legally the property of the insurer, what the insurer will do depends on a number of factors such as if you say you'd rather have them than the cash, how much time has passed to say if you still have the cash or not, what the likely value of the salvage is and what routes the insurer has to liquidate the salvage.

For low value items where the customer has already bought replacements with the settlement and doesnt really want "both" it can simply be easier to write it off and let them keep them. More expensive items where the salvage has material value then insurers will often take a different approach.

When working with an insurer more focused at the high net worth end of the market there was a quarterly internal auction of items claimed as salvage which often included half a dozen or more single earrings with 1ct diamonds etc where clearly the insured had lost one, we'd paid out on the pair and claimed the remaining one as salvage... a colleague had bought one and had it set into her fiancée's engagement ring.