How To Protect Your High Value Jewellery

With rising gold and silver prices, more of us now own high value jewellery that’s worth more than the cover provided by our insurance. High net worth home insurance policy holders also tend to undervalue their possessions – so if you’re one of them, don’t put your high value jewellery at risk any longer.

High value jewellery counts among the least adequately insured items we own – and that’s a mistake that can cost us dearly.

Because most jewellery is portable, easy to conceal and relatively simple to convert into cash, items like rings, necklaces, watches, bracelets are favourites on every burglar’s shopping list.

Indeed, if you don’t wear your jewellery very often, it can be weeks or months before you realise it has gone.

One of our clients didn’t realise he’d lost a 1930s Omega pocket watch, gold chain and hand-engraved antique cufflinks until the police returned them 10 days later (the thief had made the mistake of stealing a notecase with the owner’s name and address in it).

Even if you manage to keep your high value jewellery out of the burglars’ clutches, many items are delicate, easy to damage and deceptively simple to misplace.

And if you’ve undervalued their worth or failed to arrange adequate high net worth home insurance, you not only face the prospect of losing hard-to-replace (or irreplaceable) items, but you also won’t receive adequate compensation for their loss or theft.

Luckily, making sure your high-value jewellery is adequately covered is easy. If you follow these simple steps, you should always have adequate cover in place if anything happens to the contents of your jewellery box.

Get your high value jewellery professionally valued

Recent research has found that as many as 60% of high net worth home insurance holders risk being underinsured.

Two main reasons are that some policyholders don’t realise how much their family heirlooms are really worth, while others don’t realise that the price of high value jewellery has recently increased – gold prices alone have trebled since 2004.

To avoid being underinsured, be sure to have your jewellery professionally valued and then check that your high value home contents insurance offers adequate cover. If it doesn’t, seek out a policy that does.

Consider using a broker for your high value contents insurance

If you have many high value possessions, it’s very likely that most ‘one-size-fits-all’ insurance policies will not be adequate for your needs.

That’s where insurance brokers come into their own. They are able to suggest areas of cover you may need, reducing the likelihood that you will end up with a policy that fails to cover your assets sufficiently.

Better still, insurance brokers are able to offer professional advice and a level of service that simply isn’t on offer from price comparison websites.

Get free high net worth home insurance advice

The real key to making sure your high value jewellery is properly covered is to get high quality professional advice.

To help you get started, we’ve teamed up with leading insurance broker, WB Baxter Insurance Brokers Ltd to offer you free high net worth home insurance advice.

Armed with that advice, you can then make a much more informed decision about your insurance arrangements.

But whether you choose insurance from Baxters or elsewhere, always make sure you review your cover on a regular basis – if jewellery prices continue to rise, you need to make sure you don’t risk your valuables with inadequate insurance cover.

After all, not every burglar is unlucky enough to hand over your name and address to a curious police officer.