Home insurance cancelled due to jewellery

aroominyork

For some years we have had building and contents insurance with Aviva and insured some jewellery with TH March (specialist brokers). This year I moved home and contents to Nationwide (with whom I have banked for about 30 years) and they also gave me a good quote for the jewellery. Before moving the jewellery to Nationwide we had it revalued for the first time in quite a few years. When I told the new valuations to Nationwide they not only said they could not insure it, but they would no longer insure our home because having the jewellery in the house made the risk too high; they will cancel the home insurance in two weeks. There are only a few items of jewellery and we could put a couple of them into secure storage but I think it is my wife's engagement ring (a family heirloom) that made them nervous. 

I am waiting for TH March to come back to me with a building/contents quote but I have a feeling it will be very high. Does anyone have any ideas or know of a good home insurer, one that either also covers high value jewellery or at least does not reject clients because of it?

Sandtree

What sort of values? Both the highest individual items and total value?

The likes of M&S Premier (Aviva) has a single item limit of £15k and total valuable limit of £50k and there are a few others aimed at mid net worth/ mass-affluent 

dunstonh

When I told the new valuations to Nationwide they not only said they could not insure it, but they would no longer insure our home because having the jewellery in the house made the risk too high; they will cancel the home insurance in two weeks. 

That is not an uncommon scenario if you have high value items which are above the thresholds for the mainstream policies that banks, building societies and comparison sites sell.

There are only a few items of jewellery and we could put a couple of them into secure storage but I think it is my wife's engagement ring (a family heirloom) that made them nervous. 

Personal feelings about an asset will not bother them at all.  The value will be the issue.  If its above their threshold, they will refuse cover.  if its below then they will not.  

 Does anyone have any ideas or know of a good home insurer, one that either also covers high value jewellery or at least does not reject clients because of it?

Knowing the value will help as it may be the difference between a better quality middle of the road option or looking at the premium quality providers, like NFU or Hiscox.  

Sandtree

dunstonh said:
Knowing the value will help as it may be the difference between a better quality middle of the road option or looking at the premium quality providers, like NFU or Hiscox.  

NFU are exceptionally expensive for items you take out the house and in particular as the single article limit for unspecified items is £2k (from memory). They came out at almost 3 times Hiscox and 5 times M&S because even though you'd realistically only take one or two items out the house at the same time you have to declare all of them

aroominyork

I declared eight items with a total value of £70,485 and a highest item of £25,000.

There area  few ways I could reduce this .

i) We are in the process of selling an item valued at £18,265; we do not need this covered.

ii) We could take three lower value items totalling £11,300 off the schedule and potentially store them away from our home.

iii) Most valuations were 15 years old so we had them revalued in early 2022. We were not happy with the value of £16,400 put on the engagement ring because it stated L/M colour which we felt was wrong. So we had it revalued and it came out as £25,000 (J colour). We could declare the £16,400 valuation.

In summary, the only items we need to keep at our house are:

-          Engagement ring (£16,400/£25,000) and eternity ring (£3,895) worn all the time

-          Earrings and bracelet worn occasionally, value £4,225 and £7,800 respectively.

Sandtree

Given you contested the £16k valuation it would be a bit silly to then declare this as its value as if they were to become aware of the £25k valuation then the averaging clause would apply reducing your settlement to represent the under insurance. Diamonds don't change colour so what was it graded as 15 years ago?

Your best bet is to get quotes from the likes of Hiscox who'll be comfortable quoting on a £25k item or speak to a broker

aroominyork

Sandtree said:

Given you contested the £16k valuation it would be a bit silly to then declare this as its value as if they were to become aware of the £25k valuation then the averaging clause would apply reducing your settlement to represent the under insurance. Diamonds don't change colour so what was it graded as 15 years ago?

15 years ago it was graded J. The person who recently graded it L/M also rated another diamond (the one was are now looking to sell) as L/M which was previously graded G. We phoned to ask if he could explain these differences and he became quote unpleasant so we have put it (and him) behind us. But his valuation of £16k for the engagement rind might still be useful to us if it helps us get the insurance policy we want.

dunstonh said:

Knowing the value will help as it may be the difference between a better quality middle of the road option or looking at the premium quality providers, like NFU or Hiscox.  

Knowing this (1147 post), can you suggest some middle of the road options?

aroominyork

I'm not getting far finding a decent quote. TH March came back with £1700 for home/contents (the jewellery extra) - they said some insurers would not quote because we are a flood risk. I explained we live on top of an 80 ft cliff! I then checked gov.uk for our flood risk: it's Low risk for surface water, Very Low risk for rivers and the sea.

Hiscox said, before taking details, their quotes are above £2000 so I did not go further.

John Lewis and Sainsbury online were both unable to quote.

I can easily keep the jewellery under £50k. Can anyone suggest some, as dunstonh said, middle of the road options?

dunstonh

Knowing this (1147 post), can you suggest some middle of the road options?

I am too long out of that market to know who is pricing well or what their terms are.   Indeed, Sandtree, who is much closer to things than I am, picked me up on my reference to NFU.        My own circumstances mean I cannot use the mainstream providers and that sees me pay over £1500 a year for home insurance with NFU but that is mostly due to the range of buildings I have.   

I can easily keep the jewellery under £50k. Can anyone suggest some, as dunstonh said, middle of the road options?

Unfortunately, you are not a middle of the road customer.   As someone said to me yesterday when I moaned about the cost of oil "if you didn't have that house, you wouldn't have to pay that much".   There are certain things that come with the territory.  Expensive assets usually mean expensive costs.

aroominyork

So it looks like I need to bite a bullet. But I have one more question please: how does it affect a quote when I declare I have had insurance cancelled (and if I don't declare it, how do they find out)?

Sandtree

aroominyork said:

So it looks like I need to bite a bullet. But I have one more question please: how does it affect a quote when I declare I have had insurance cancelled (and if I don't declare it, how do they find out)?

You haven't had insurance cancelled, you've asked for a change, they've said they won't support it and you've decided to cancel rather than get ride of the items (basically)