Maintaining a home

Your guide to personal valuables insurance

3 February 2021

Chances are, you’ve sorted insurance for your home and its contents (if you haven’t, you can learn more about Home and Contents Insurance right now!).

But, what about the valuable belongings you leave the house with every day?

As soon as you leave your property, your home and contents policy won’t cover your stuff for insured events — unless, that is, you have personal valuables insurance.

What is personal valuables insurance?

Personal valuables insurance, sometimes known as portable valuables insurance, covers the valuable items that might go with you when you leave the house. This may include your:

  • jewellery
  • watch
  • handbag and wallet
  • mobile phone, or
  • laptop.

If you purchase this optional cover for your policy, Suncorp Insurance will provide cover for personal valuables anywhere in Australia and New Zealand. FYI, terms and conditions apply. Check the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) for details.

What's covered?

Along with the usual things you take with you, personal valuables insurance also covers items like:

  • Portable electronic and electrical items, including accessories like your headphones.
  • Sporting, recreational and leisure equipment when they’re not in use, except for bikes (provided they’re not used for racing or pace-making) and golf carts with four wheels.
  • Medical aids to support people living with a disability, such as a wheelchair or mobility scooter.
  • Photographic and optical equipment.

What isn't covered?

We generally won’t cover loss or damage to the following items:

  • Valuables used for business-related purposes.
  • Restoration of electronic records.
  • Cash, smart cards, phone cards, vouchers, money orders or stamps (not in a set or collection).

Types of personal valuables insurance

Suncorp offers personal valuables insurance as a Home and Contents Insurance or Contents Only optional cover. This means you’ll need to pay extra for it on top of your policy premium.

If you’d like a little more cover, our Classic Advantages Home and Contents Insurance policy offers optional Portable Advantages, which is a step up from portable valuables. It provides coverage for:

  • accidental loss or damage to your contents anywhere in Australia or New Zealand, when they’ve been removed from your property (for up to 180 consecutive days), and
  • jewellery and watches when they’re outside Australia and New Zealand for up to 100 consecutive days, as long as they’re being worn or stored securely in a safe.

Call us on 13 11 55 to find out more.

Specified vs unspecified items

One of the most important things to know about personal valuables cover is the difference between specified and unspecified items.

  • If you select our standard cover for unspecified items, your belongings will be insured up to a total of $1,000 per item (less your excess). This might work well if your items aren’t worth more than this.
  • With specified items cover, you can insure expensive items to their full value (or their sum insured less your excess). An additional premium may apply.

Say a waiter accidentally trips and spills coffee all over your laptop at a café and it’s damaged. With our standard cover, you’d only receive $1,000 for a new computer. However, with specified items cover you can insure your laptop up to its full value, meaning you’ll less likely be out-of-pocket.

Get a Home and Contents Insurance quote

Need more info? Take a look at our guide to Premiums, Excesses, Discounts and Claim Payments or find out more about how to record the details of your valuable item for insurance purposes.

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Insurance is issued by AAI Limited ABN 48 005 297 807 trading as Suncorp Insurance. Consider the Product Disclosure Statement before making a decision about this insurance. This advice has been prepared without taking into account your particular objectives, financial situations or needs, so you should consider whether it is appropriate for you before acting on it.

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