Protecting high-value personal possessions: a guide for business owners

Many of WillU’s private clients have built up more than a successful business. There’s often a personal collection alongside it too: watches, art, jewellery, wine, sometimes a classic car in the garage. It’s easy to assume these are simply covered under a standard home insurance policy. In our experience, that assumption is one of the most common, and costly, gaps in private client insurance.

Most home insurance policies come with limits per item and an overall cap on unspecified contents, items not individually listed on the policy. A single watch or painting can easily exceed the per-item limit on its own, and a modest collection can quietly blow through the unspecified items cap. Go over either limit and you could find part of your loss simply isn’t covered, and depending on the insurer’s wording, some claims can be reduced further still, or refused altogether, if valuable items weren’t declared properly.

Anything valuable enough to matter is usually better placed on a policy as a specified item, listed individually with its own agreed value, rather than lumped in with general contents. It costs more to set up properly, but it means there’s no argument at claim time about what an item was worth, or whether it was covered in the first place.

Insurers generally want a professional valuation for anything of real value, and they’ll usually want it updated periodically, particularly for items like art, jewellery and watches where market values move. An outdated valuation can leave you with an agreed value that no longer reflects what the item is actually worth today. It is also a good idea to keep proof of purchase for higher-value items.

Depending on the value of what’s being covered, insurers may expect certain security measures to be in place, a safe of a particular rating, an alarm system, or safe storage for anything not on display. These requirements can affect both whether cover is available and what it costs, so it’s worth knowing them before a policy is arranged rather than discovering them at claim stage.

A good specialist policy doesn’t stop at your front door. It’s worth checking whether cover extends to items in transit, on loan to family, at exhibitions, or simply travelling with you or worn on your person, since a lot of standard home policies are far more restrictive once an item leaves the house.

Every collection is different, and the right policy should reflect that, not a generic contents figure that happens to be big enough. If you’ve got high-value items at home that you’re not confident are properly covered, it’s worth having a private client insurance review with a member of the WillU team.