Why is my Georgia homeowners policy not enough coverage for my jewelry?

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Quick answer: Your standard homeowners policy caps jewelry theft coverage at $1,500 per item (some policies use a $2,500 total sublimit).

Your Georgia homeowners policy is usually not enough to cover your jewelry because of a built-in special limit, often called a sublimit, on theft of jewelry. Even if your overall personal property coverage is generous, jewelry theft is typically capped at a low amount, leaving valuable pieces badly underinsured.

Most homeowners policies limit jewelry theft to somewhere between $1,000 and $2,500 total. That cap applies to all your jewelry combined, not per item. So if a thief takes your engagement ring, your spouse’s watch, and a pair of heirloom earrings, you are still capped at that single low number regardless of what the pieces are actually worth.

There is a second gap that surprises people. The standard homeowners sublimit usually applies to theft only. Other losses, such as simply losing a stone out of a setting or your ring slipping off and disappearing down a drain, are often not covered at all under base homeowners coverage.

Here is a concrete example. You have a $12,000 engagement ring and your home is burglarized. Your homeowners policy has a $1,500 jewelry theft sublimit, so it pays $1,500 and you absorb the remaining $10,500 yourself. That is the gap that catches most owners off guard.

Scheduling your jewelry with a separate listing on your policy, sometimes called a scheduled personal property endorsement or floater, removes the sub-limit and usually covers more causes of loss for a small premium. Scheduling does three important things:

  • It insures each item for its full appraised value, well above the homeowners sublimit.
  • It broadens covered causes of loss to include accidental loss and mysterious disappearance, not just theft.
  • It often comes with little or no deductible on the scheduled items.

An endorsement like this is inexpensive relative to the value it protects, and it turns a frustrating partial payout into a full one. To find out which pieces should be scheduled and for how much, request a free coverage review at our coverage review page.