Home contents insurance and proof of ownership
We really, really hope that this never happens, but should any of your precious belongings get damaged or stolen out of your home, you should be able to provide us with proof of ownership when you claim for it against your home contents insurance policy. This is standard procedure when it comes to insurance policies and claim procedures for home contents insurance, across the board at any insurance company. So for your peace of mind, let’s look at the whats, the whys and the hows behind home contents insurance and how you can prove that you own what you say you do in case you one day need to…
What exactly can you cover for under home contents insurance?
Home contents insurance covers you for damage or loss of all those valuable goodies and gadgets and things that belong to you or any member of your household who lives with you. The items must be kept in your own home and its outbuildings at the address that is officially noted on your home contents insurance policy. Such as your TV, clothes, cds etc.
The layman’s definition of ‘home contents’.
Very simply put, home contents can be seen as anything that would fall out of your home if you were able to turn it upside down.
Why you should be able to offer proof of ownership for your home contents insurance.
There are not-so-nice and nice reasons why you need to be able to offer proof of ownership for home contents insurance purposes. The not-so-nice reason is that unfortunately not everyone’s as honest as you. There are many crooks out there who claim for items that they’ve never owned. This does not only harm their insurance company, but in the end it also affects the cost of home contents insurance cover for all the rest of us. This is why insurance companies need to unfortunately check ownership when their clients claim against their home contents insurance policies.
The nice reason for it, is that is in your own best interest to do so. Think about it this way… The average price of a TV can be anything from R2,000 to R45,000 or even more. So if you’re able to prove that your TV was worth R20,000 and you made provision for enough cover, you’ll be able to get R20,000 back from your insurance company and not just R2,000.
The most sensible way to approach it; is to work out what it will cost you to replace each and every item in your home and make sure that you’ve provided sufficiently for that under your home contents insurance policy. This way you won’t have fork out a small fortune when any of it unexpectedly gets damaged or stolen. Remember it’s always better to be over insured that under insured.
You should also make sure that expensive items such as jewellery or watches that are worth more than R15,000 each, are listed individually on your home contents insurance policy and that you’re able to supply valuation certificates for them.
How you can prove that you own what you say you do for home contents insurance.
There are a few things you can do to proof ownership of your possessions for your home contents insurance purposes. The easiest way is to keep the slips and manuals of items that you buy and to take a photo of it that has the date on it. This way you’ll have an image, a description, the value, as well as the model and serial numbers of it at hand.
Source: King Price
