Contents Insurance

Contents insurance policies provide protection to house and personal contents against a wide set of damages and theft. It is obvious that in the event of any damage to all the contents you own, replacing all of them at once is quite impossible. Replacing even the items of basic necessity will involve a lumpsum investment which not only will take away much of your savings but also put you and your family in a very difficult financial state. With content insurance you can recover the costs of the contents which have been damaged and can also meet such a situation successfully. And for all these you just need to pay a small amount of annual premium. Contents insurance will help you to mitigate all your worries that keep coming to your mind when you are away from your home or when you receive warnings for an imminent natural disaster. You no more need to live with the tension of loosing your possessions as the content insurance policy will pay for the replacement costs.

 
But what are the items that are included in “contents”? Does it include furniture – sofas, cupboard, bed and racks? Does it include kitchen utensils? And electrical appliances – the mixer, microwave, refrigerator, AC? Is it so that everything in your home is covered under “contents”? And what about the expensive carpet you had imported last year? Should you keep the valuables – jewelries, silver, your favorite pearl set, and coins and currencies in the locker?
These questions and many others that will come to your mind will be the most crucial to get the right kind of contents insurance policy for you.

In general, standard content insurance policies cover items such as all kinds of furniture, household goods including kitchen utensils, electrical appliances (refrigerator, microwave oven, TV, AC, etc), clothes and linen, curtains and movable items like bicycle and laptop. These items are covered under the normal premium paid for most of the standard policies. Other items of higher values, such as jewelries, expensive carpets, antiques, precious stones and metals, paintings are covered at extra premiums as the coverage increases beyond the normal coverage.

There are three broad categories of content cover that are provided by content insurance: general contents, contents that have maximum limit, and special limit items to get more limit than the normal coverage limit. The various items covered under general contents include possessions belonging to you and your family such as clothes, books, bedding, household items, furniture, kitchenware etc. Unlike general contents, insurance companies impose maximum limits of coverage on certain items which come under contents with maximum limit. These items include cash and currencies, antiques, carpets, various negotiable instruments, etc. Special limit items are those which are of special interest to the policy holder and their coverage can be increased beyond the normal coverage limit by paying additional premiums. These items include paintings, DVDs, records, watches, etc.

If you buy a standard content insurance policy, you will get coverage for damages caused by a wide range of events. You went for a tour for few days, and after returning you found that there was a theft while you were not present; most of your possessions including the valuable items are lost. Or there was a fire caused by sparks from your erring electric iron and it destroyed much of the contents. There was a fault in the plumbing system and the resulting water leakage damaged your home’s wooden floorings. Even incidents that are external such as vandalism, riots or a vehicle directly hitting your house can cause severe damage to the contents. However, a comprehensive content policy is all that can save you in these situations. With just a small premium of few bucks annually you can protect your contents against damages and theft.

Often in our life there comes a situation where we are left with almost nothing to live our normal life – a small fire, theft or a natural disaster can take away everything that we have built over years. And in such situations there is no friend or relative whom we can look forward to. Yet we need financial support during those events. It is here that the worth of content insurance is visible. A content insurance policy will offer as much as full replacement to the damaged items depending on certain conditions of the policy. Therefore it is always advisable to have a policy before you meet anything unfortunate which not only destroys your precious possessions but also your normal living and that of your family. With a policy you are protected against these events.