Understanding Jewelry Insurance
Jewelry insurance is a specialized insurance policy that provides comprehensive coverages against unforeseen scenarios specific to jewelry.
Jewelry insurance is a specialized insurance policy that provides comprehensive coverage against unforeseen scenarios specific to jewelry. Coverages include theft, loss, accidental damage, and mysterious disappearance - and are typically neglected by your standard homeowners or renters insurance.
Depending on the jewelry items you own, it's typically recommended to have jewelry insurance to protect against unforeseen accidents. Jewelry insurance provides peace of mind in case your jewelry is broken, stolen, or lost.
At Oyster, we specialize in insuring jewelry of all shapes, sizes and values and our low minimum annual premium of $25 (just $2/month) means that protecting items you may not normally think of becomes affordable.
Jewelry coverage under a homeowners or renters policy is typically very limited and very restrictive. For instance, accidental damage is often not covered and theft is covered up to a relatively low limit, such as $1,500.
The most common cause of jewelry loss is mysterious disappearance (i.e. you left it the hotel or at the restaurant) and this is very unlikely to be covered under a homeowners policy. You are also subject to the same deductible as your overall homeowners or renters policy (which is often $1,000), meaning that in a case of loss or damage, your actual protection may be well below the cost to replace or repair your jewelry.
Other key drawbacks include the fact that any claims can affect your homeowner premiums and there is limited control over the repair/replace service. In summary, homeowners or renters policies are great for certain protection, but not adequate for jewelry. For more details, see our blog post on this topic.
Policies with Oyster typically cost 1-2% of the value of the jewelry per year. This means that a $5,000 ring could cost only $50 per year to insure, or only $4 per month. Protecting your valuable jewelry could be cheaper than one coffee a month. We have an in-depth article on the cost of jewelry insurance.
A deductible is the amount that will be subtracted from any future claims payout (i.e. it is your contribution to the payout of the claim). In general, a lower deductible means a higher monthly premium, and vice versa. With Oyster, our default deductible is $0 but we also offer different options in case you want to reduce your premium.
The premium is the cost of your insurance policy. You pay this figure regardless of whether you file a claim or not, and unlike homeowners and renters insurance, your premium will not increase if you do need to file a claim.
We only need a few pieces of information to get the claim started. These include some basic contact information (if we don't already have it) and your policy number. We will also need some information about the incident, such as the date you became aware of the issue, the item involved and a brief description of the circumstances. This is all we need to get the ball rolling.
We may need additional information during the process, but the claims team will let you know if anything else is needed. Additional information could include photos of the item (e.g. if damaged), appraisals, purchase receipts, or a police report in a theft case.
Join Oyster today to learn how you can be properly protected from the unexpected things in life.