Insuring Your Valuables and Collectibles: Top Tips To Ensure They Are Adequately Protected
Posted in: Personal Insurance
Are all of the valuable contents in your home sufficiently protected?
One of the most effective ways to make certain your valuable items and collections are adequately insured is to schedule on a replacement or stated value basis. For example, a $10,000 diamond engagement ring that is scheduled is covered on an all risk basis, which means that if it is lost or stolen, the ring is either going to be replaced by another ring of the same like, kind and quality, or a stated reimbursement amount will be offered based on the coverage chosen. The affluent markets offer an additional coverage in the event your loss exceeds the stated amount — high valued markets will actually give up to an additional 50% over the stated value. Scheduling is recommended for jewelry, silver, furs, fine arts, among other valuable items and collections.
Do you collect valuable items such as fine arts, antiques, wine, stamps, coins, sports memorabilia? These prized collections may have limited coverage on your homeowners insurance policy. In order to ensure you have the right protection in place, we often advise our clients to hire a service whose sole purpose is to properly evaluate the contents of your home, including any and all of your collections. This will help to ensure your assets are properly covered.
Home content evaluation services make sure that every article in your home is documented, which in the event of a loss will be absolutely essential to ensuring you are adequately reimbursed for all of the property damage and loss. Many of these evaluation service companies are fee based. For an annual fee, they will assess all of the contents of your home (as well as the contents of any boats or RVs you may also own). They will then create a digital diagram of your home that includes the location of each of your valuable items room-by-room.
Once the diagram and all of your information is finalized, you will own this secured digital space where you will be able to manage all of your contents. You will be able to provide access to this data to your wealth manager, insurance agent and whoever else you think should have access. Your content information is automatically updated each year so when your insurance carrier requests an updated appraisal, the information is readily available.
If you have any questions about working with a home evaluation service or scheduling your valuable items, please feel free to contact me at eazwalinsky@psafinancial.com.
