Everything You Need to Know About How to Insure Your Jewelry
While your jewelry is absolutely covered by your homeowner’s insurance, there are many limitations to the protection offered.
In many cases, jewelry is often the most valuable possession in a household. Unfortunately, due to its small size, jewelry is also one of the more commonly stolen or lost items.
Even if your jewelry collection isn’t worth $1 million, if it was lost or stolen you may be on the hook for the majority of the cost to replace it. The standard homeowners policy usually has a cap when it comes to jewelry.
If you have an expensive jewelry collection you will need a rider or separate policy to make sure your valuables are properly protected. Here’s everything you need to know about how to insure your jewelry.
Homeowners Insurance Doesn’t Offer Much Protection
While your jewelry is absolutely covered by your homeowner’s insurance, there are many limitations to the protection offered. Here are just a couple of the more important limitations that apply to your jewelry:
- Some Perils Not Covered: The majority of homeowners insurance policies cover your possessions, jewelry included, against 16 specific perils that are listed in the policy. This means you are covered if your home is burglarized and the thieves make off with your jewelry, or they are destroyed in a fire, scattered across the county thanks to a tornado, or damaged by a leaky roof.
However, standard homeowner policies do not cover damage due to flooding or earthquakes, which means that if your home is flooded or destroyed by an earthquake, you’ll be on the hook to replace your jewelry.
The same goes for your own carelessness. If your jewelry, for example a ring, slips off your finger and down the drain and is destroyed by a garbage disposal, you will not be able to make a claim.
- Coverage Levels Are Capped: There are personal possession caps on every single homeowners policy, and high-value items such as jewelry are restricted even further. In general, personal property coverage is capped at around 50% to 75% of the total amount of your policy’s coverage.
Jewelry and other high-value items such as collectibles, firearms, and wine are usually capped at roughly $2,500 per claim. Coverage caps vary by policy so check with your agent in regards to the restrictions of your particular policy.
How to Protect Your Jewelry
There are a couple of ways to ensure that your jewelry is properly protected:
Buy A Rider: It’s possible to purchase an additional rider for your homeowners policy that will protect certain high-value items. You will need to declare all of your jewelry and if its value is above a certain limit you may have to have it all appraised. A rider will up your coverage levels for the specific items that are listed on the rider schedule.
The cost of this coverage will vary by insurance company but in general, expect to pay roughly 1% to 2% of the value of the jewelry you want to protect as a yearly premium. As an example, if you have $20,000 worth of jewelry you hope to protect you may be paying $200-$400 per year.
Purchase a Separate Policy
It’s possible to buy a completely separate policy that only covers your jewelry. Jewelry insurance is often the best choice if you have a large amount of high-value items.
These policies cover your jewelry against all the common perils as well as losses that are your fault such as simply misplacing it. It even covers jewelry that just disappears for some unexplained reason (it’s possibly sitting in drainpipe somewhere) as well as damage or loss due to flood and earthquake.
One thing this insurance doesn’t cover is wear and tear or deterioration.
One benefit of an additional policy just for your jewelry is that any claims you make will not be reflected on your homeowners insurance. This means if you have to make a claim due to missing jewelry, your homeowners insurance premiums will not skyrocket.
Tips for Filing a Claim
Hopefully you will never have to make a claim on your homeowners insurance or jewelry policy but if you do here are a few tips to make sure the process goes smoothly:
- Contact the police and get the police report if the issue is theft. This will help your claims adjuster understand the details of the burglary.
- If your jewelry was damaged by a covered peril be sure to take plenty of photos of the damage jewelry to submit with your claim.
- If you have had the jewelry appraised, submit the appraisal report with your claim information.
- Contact your insurance company as soon as possible to start the claims process.