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It's good to shop around for the best deals when looking for home insurance. Picture: Chris Collingridge
When insuring your home it is important to know what you are covered for as well as the extent of your insurance cover.
Comprehensive homeowner's insurance should include structural cover and cover for the contents of the home. The first is about insuring the building – including the walls, roof, windows and geysers – against damage from perils such as lightning, fire, hail, vandalism and storms. The second is about insuring the contents of the home.
Shehnaz Somers, head of personal lines underwriting at Santam, offers the following advice:
Make sure you are not underinsured – a fact that often only comes to light at the stage of making a claim. Draw up an inventory of items to help you assess your insurance needs.
Know how much it would cost to rebuild your house. Ask your broker to find out what the going rate is per square metre. Multiply that by the floor space of your house and the total is the amount you should be insured for.
Your personal property coverage is a percentage of that amount (normally 55 percent, upgradable to 75 percent).
For your belongings inventory, list every item in your home and garage, when you bought it, its original cost and its estimated value. It also helps to have photographs of your possessions. Keep one copy in a safe place.
Marking your items with a personal identification number such as the last four digits of your ID number (don't use your full ID number as that will make you vulnerable to identity theft) will make reclaiming any stolen items easier.
Understand the terms and conditions of your cover. Qualification for home and contents insurance is restricted to consumers who are the legal owners of the house that is to be insured. In addition, the home must have brick walls and a tiled, asbestos or corrugated iron roof.
Special limits may apply to certain types of personal property or the contents of your home. For example, bank notes and rare coins, securities, stamp collections, jewellery, firearms, silverware/goldware, rugs, tapestries and wall hangings may be subject to a separate or special insurance policy.
Clients often forget to inform insurers about changed circumstances and accumulation of new possessions. Unfortunately, they only realise the impact of this when they have to claim, so update your policy annually. Also let your insurer know what improvements or additions you have made to your home.
If you are not sure about what it is you are being quoted on or about any aspect of your cover during the lifecycle of your home policy, get an expert to help you.
Brokers are a good source of information and advice, and can assist you in many ways – from helping you update your inventory to helping you lodge a claim. - Saturday Star
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