How You Choose to Wear Your Jewellery Impacts on Insurance

Jewellery and watches are amongst our most treasured possessions. It is rarely the monetary value that really matters to us but it is the value and portability of jewellery that leaves it vulnerable to theft, loss and damage.

Standard contents policies don’t cater particularly well for high value jewellery and watches. Many policies contain hidden restrictions on how you wear these items – restrictions which often only come to light when you need to make a claim.

Rick Toogood, Associate Director, Castleacre London, explains:

‘People can miss things in the small print of a policy which then jeopardises a claim. An insurer might only cover your jewellery if it is always stored in a particular make of safe, or they may restrict the number of times you wear a high value piece throughout the year.’

‘Many of our clients want flexibility in their jewellery cover – so they may, for example, want to be able to travel abroad with their jewellery without having to call their insurer each time they go overseas. There are of course clients who are quite happy to keep an important family piece in a safe for most of the year and we will find a policy that works for them too. The policy small print can be a bit of minefield for people and that is what we are here to help with.’

We have created a short guide to insuring jewellery which explains some of the insurance terms that insurers use and some of the hidden restrictions that may appear in your own policy.