25 Jan Assess if you are properly covered

Start the year with an assessment of your insurance cover and whether it meets your current situation. Perhaps you took advantage of the year-end break to do some upgrades to your home – did you revamp your kitchen, bathrooms or outside entertainment area? If so, these changes need to be included in your homeowners cover. What about high-end purchases such as TVs, hifis, jewellery, cameras, inverters, sunglasses, mobile phones? Did you decide to give your vehicle to your son or daughter now that they have a drivers’ licence? Did you get a new vehicle for yourself?

The loss of these items could be very frustrating – and costly – so they need to be included in your policy to ensure that you are fully covered.

It isn’t always about adding items. An accurate assessment may help reduce the cost of your premium. For example, if your current vehicle is another year older, its value may have depreciated, so you should adjust this in terms of its insurance cover. If you have installed a security system or moved to a secure estate, this could also impact on what you pay. Remember that electric fencing and solar panels need to be certified by an approved installation expert as do gas stove installations.

Look at accurate replacement value

It is essential to insure your home, commercial property, holiday home etc so that they can be rebuilt to match the original standard (along with the contents that will need to be replaced) should the worst occur and they are destroyed or damaged by a natural disaster such as a fire, flooding, storm or other disaster. Building costs may change dramatically over time, so this should be reassessed regularly.

How to start?

When insurers talk about the ‘building sum insured’, this refers to the estimated cost of rebuilding your home, not its market value. Your property should always be insured for the rebuild sum.

• Reassess the potential building replacement costs according to the current Building Material Index.
• Does your policy include the cost of removing the remains of any damaged/destroyed buildings?
• List the household items that you would need to replace in the event that your property was damaged/destroyed, and check prices online to ensure that you are adequately covered.

Liability cover

Something else to consider – do you have adequate personal liability cover to protect you from any legal expenses and/or second party damages after a home-based disaster for which you might be held responsible?

Stay up to date

Your insurer may inform its clients about changes to policy wordings and the cover that is provided through endorsements, warranties and extensions (included and optional) that are issued throughout the year. Clients need to stay updated with their policy wording and policy schedules to ensure that they know the details of their cover. Your Safire-approved broker will assist with this to ensure that you are fully aware of the cover you have at any time.