If you find that you have a high level of contents, take a lot of jewellery out of your house at the same time, or own a sizeable property, you may find the term Mid-High Net Worth insurance is used to describe your needs.
In the simplest terms, if your buildings sum insured exceeds £500,000, and your contents sum insured exceeds £100,000, you may be considered for this type of cover.
The policies include some extra cover as standard compared to a typical buildings and contents policy, and may well be better tailored to your requirements too.
Items away from home
With a standard buildings and contents policy, you have to decide on the amount of contents you will take away from home at any one time.
Generally, you would have to specify any items above around £1,500 – £2,000. Laptops, mobile phones and pedal cycles with some insurers have to be specified up to any amount. If you had a collection of high-end jewellery for example, you’d end up having to disclose a long list of specified items every year, making it a time-consuming process, and can leave you without cover if you forget one of your items.
If you don’t have items above the single article limit, and only wear a few pieces out at once, you may be able to set an amount of cover for the total amount of loss away from home, without naming any items. This is known as unspecified personal possessions.
Mid-High Net Worth insurance policies cover all contents worldwide for up to 60 days at any one time, meaning that you wouldn’t have to choose the items you take away. This may seem extreme, as you’re unlikely to take your sofa out of the property with you, but it is just one of the features of the policy designed to be easier for clients, who may not have the time to contact their insurance company every time they need to upgrade their policy to reach outside of the UK. The single article limits for these policies are generally higher too, meaning that you only have to list items valued at £10,000 – £15,000 or more.
Preparing for Mid-High Net Worth insurance quotes
With a standard contents policy, the figures you would normally provide would be the total contents sum, and the amounts within that for unspecified valuables inside the home, unspecified personal possessions away from home, and details of any specified items. There are a number of resources online to help calculate the correct contents amount.
Items that you list are more specifically insured, and don’t need to be included in the specified amounts.
With Mid-High Net Worth, the valuables section tends to be split into categories, so it is worth thinking about how much cover you need for each before you start shopping around:
- General Contents
- Antiques & Furniture
- Clocks & Barometers
- Objets d’Art
- Gold, Silver, Platinum, Pewter and Plate & Precious Stones
- Stamp and Coin Collections
- Wines
- Guns
Individual companies may have different brackets that can include outdoor items, memorabilia etc. and it is worth keeping this in mind, but the above list is a great starting point.
Additional Covers
Some Mid-High Net Worth insurance companies have different ‘tiers’ of policy depending on the needs of the client, so the exact level of cover you end up with will depend on the product that is selected, but below are a few examples of additional cover that can come with these types of policies:
Mid-High Net Worth insurance automatically comes with the extended level of accidental damage cover.
Longer timeframes on time-sensitive covers, such as alternative accommodation.
Hole in one cover for official golf competitions
A percentage of cover for contents within an additional property elsewhere in the world. You may even be able to insure both properties on a single policy with some providers
An automatic increase in the value of an item following the death of the artist
Limited cover for boats and leisurecraft
Whatever your individual requirements, chances are there is a policy that exists to give you the cover that you require. Dealing with a policy that meets your individual requirements will usually work out as more cost-effective in the long run than trying to make a more standard policy fit.
GSI Insurance Services (Southern) Ltd. have plenty of experience in handling mid-high net worth insurance policies, and have a range of products from some of the most well-known companies in the space. Give us a call on 0800 612 9376 or click “Get a Quote” to fill in our online form.
