England 04/03/2013
The rising value of gold means that some people’s regular content insurance no longer provides adequate cover, so they are having to buy additional cover
In the past demand for high value insurance was very limited. Today, demand for this specialist insurance product is growing. There are several reasons for this.
One of the biggest reasons is the fact that the price of gold has risen by so much in the past few years. This year the price of gold has fallen slightly. However, the fact that the price of gold more than doubled in just a few years meant that the value of people’s jewellery collections has also more than doubled. Most people do not have a lot of jewellery, but some people really like it and over their lifetime build up a significant collection with a quite high value.
Most believed that they had this jewellery insured as part of their standard home contents insurance policy. In some cases, this type of cover was adequate. However, the fact that the value of gold went up so much meant that the value of the jewellery also more than doubled. This pushed the value of many families’s jewellery collection beyond the value covered by a standard content insurance policy. In other words they ended up underinsured.
At first, many did not realise that this had happened. The appearance of stories in the press about burglars targeting certain types of family specifically for their gold jewellery first alerted them to a potential problem. A few of these stories mentioned the fact that the insurance only covered a percentage of the loss. At this point, many homeowners checked their existing policies and realised, they did not have adequate for their, now quite valuable, jewellery collection.
Securing cover is not difficult
More families turned to specialist insurance companies like High Worth Insurance to buy home content insurance policies to cover their family’s jewellery. The firm specialises in providing cover for a huge range of high value items as well as policies for homeowners whose home contents exceed an overall value of £75,000.