Removal Insurance

Insurance.    The removal company quotation will include its insurance cover quote, normally as a percentage of the value of the goods being shipped.

All BAR members (see Professional Associations for details on BAR) provide an insurance policy to an agreed minimum standard. BAR uses a panel of insurance brokers whom it recognises as being specialists in removal insurance and whose services it recommends. 

Completing The Proposal Forms

Your shipment will not be insured by the removal company unless you have completed a proposal form. 

It is advisable to assess your home contents carefully for valuation purposes. Estimate the replacement cost in the UK to ensure full cover. 

Be as specific as possible when listing the value of items for insurance purposes. Many insurance companies have pre-printed proposal forms that allow you to list items room by room.  The pre-printed form makes it easy to group things together with an overall value, but in our experience this makes it difficult to claim for a single item.

For instance, say you have 5 pictures in your main living room. One is a real gem by an up and and coming artist, and is worth £4500. The other four are prints worth only around £100 each. On the pre-printed proposal form, you list 5 pictures as having a total value of £5000. In the event of a claim, the pictures would be assumed by the underwriters to be worth £1000 each. If your best picture was ruined, you'd be £3500 down!!

Make Your Own Inventory

We strongly recommend that rather than use the insurer's pre-printed proposal forms, you prepare a detailed inventory of everything that you're going to ship or store.

For each item worth over (say) £50, try and record the date and place of purchase and purchase price, and its current value. We'd recommend that you photograph everything worth over (say) £500. We know that this is time-consuming, but please believe that its worth the effort! 

Attach your inventory to the proposal form. Make sure that you keep a copy of the inventory. If your inventory is on your PC that's being shipped, write the inventory to a floppy disk and put it in your hand luggage. Clients using our relocation services are invited to email their inventory to us for storage on our server. 

 If any of your belongings are going into storage please ensure that they are covered by appropriate insurance for both the removal to store, and the time spent in store. Check that the storage insurance includes fire cover.

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