A guide to wedding & engagement ring insurance coverage

Planning a wedding is busy enough without adding insurance to your to-do list. But engagement rings, like many other jewellery items, can be expensive – so ensuring they’re covered could be worthwhile.

With GIO Contents Insurance or Home and Contents Insurance, you can cover your special items like jewellery – including wedding and engagement rings – both at and away from home.

Why you need insurance for your rings

Engagement rings and wedding rings can hold a lot of value – both financial and sentimental. So making sure they’re covered in the event of loss, theft, or damage may be worth considering.

The importance of appraisals

Knowing the value of a piece of jewellery makes having adequate insurance easier. If you ever need to make an insurance claim for your wedding or engagement ring, you’ll need to prove its value, or risk receiving an inadequate payout. You can do this by providing documents, like:

• a certificate of valuation,
• a receipt, and
• photos of the ring from various angles, noting details.

If a piece is particularly valuable, as engagement rings often are, it may be worth having it appraised every few years to ensure its valued amount is accurate. This can be especially worth considering if the ring was:

• inherited
• a family heirloom, or
• an antique.

This appraisal can be free from dedicated valuers, but receiving a certificate of valuation may cost a fee.

Risks to your rings

GIO Contents Insurance covers the items you keep at home. However, your ring will often travel with you wherever you go. Good thing optional GIO Portable Valuables can insure your engagement ring when it’s out of the home.

Portable Valuables can cover select items for accidental loss or damage anywhere in Australia and New Zealand. For watches and jewellery this cover extends to anywhere in the world for 30 consecutive days, as long as they’re being worn by you or kept in a secure safe.

We offer varying levels of cover, so if you have this optional cover, the chosen level will be shown on your certificate of insurance. For a list of covered items and a complete breakdown on cover, refer to the PDS.

Portable Valuables - unspecified items

When you get insurance for your valuables, there is a limit on how much can be covered. This limit depends on your level of cover. You can choose to increase this sum insured limit up to $10,000 in exchange for paying slightly more on your premium.

• Classic cover has a limit of $1,000 per item, pair, set, or collection, up to your chosen total sum insured for this option. For example, you’re out bushwalking and lose your ring and damage your camera. Both items have an individual limit of $1,000 when unspecified, and can each be repaired or replaced up to that value – minus any applicable excess.
• Classic Extras automatically includes $4,000 of cover for portable valuables on top of your sum insured – but again, you can pay more to increase that amount. This limit covers unspecified items, which are contents items you don’t specifically list on your policy, up to $1,000 per item, pair, set or collection.
• Platinum level has its own similar-but-separate Platinum contents cover. This is similar to portable valuables cover, with an increased limit of 100 consecutive days instead of 30. Unlike the other levels of cover, Platinum contents doesn’t have a content limit like the above options do – all the limits of your contents policy apply instead..

Be sure to check the PDS for more information on the levels of cover.

Portable Valuables - specified items

You can specify certain items on your policy for a chosen value beyond the standard limit of $1,000 discussed above. If we agree, these items will then be listed on your certificate of insurance, and will be covered for that new insured amount in exchange for you paying extra on your premium.

Some items will need to be specified in order to be covered as portable valuables. Check the PDS to see these items listed.

You can specify items when you take out a policy, renew a policy, or during a policy by logging in and updating your policy details.

Update your details

What does engagement ring insurance cover?

Since ‘engagement ring insurance’ isn’t its own policy – as jewellery is covered under GIO Contents Insurance – cover extends to more than just rings. This includes cover for items in your home from things like fire, theft and storms^, and other things out of your home with portable valuables.

Other things that can be included as portable valuables include other commonly out-of-home items, for example:

• your laptop, phone, or electronic tablet
• photographic equipment like cameras
• watches, handbags and wallets, and
• drones – though these need to be specified on your policy and aren’t covered when in use.

For more detail on inclusions and exclusions, be sure to check the PDS.

How to choose the right insurance policy

Choosing the right insurance policy can be confusing, especially if you don’t know how much to cover your items for in the first place. Luckily, GIO has a useful contents insurance calculator to help figure this out.

After that, you may want to think about assessing what you specifically need to insure. Consider the following:

• Determine if an item is something that will be covered by a standard policy as it will be kept at home, or if it will leave the insured address and travel with you, like a watch, phone or engagement ring.
• Consider whether it will be covered sufficiently as an unspecified item, or if it may need to be listed as a specified item to ensure it is adequately covered.
• Review your policy regularly to ensure you’re not paying for items or extras you no longer have or need. Your circumstances may change over time, so you may want to adjust your policy to make sure you’re covering your individual needs.

Explore GIO Contents Insurance

Read more:

• How much should I insure my home for?
• How to make an easy home inventory list for insurance
• A guide to jewellery insurance

Insurance issued by AAI Limited ABN 48 005 297 807 trading as GIO. Read the Product Disclosure Statement before buying this insurance. The Target Market Determination is also available. 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.

^We do not insure you for bushfire, storm, storm surge, flood or tsunami in the first 72 hours of your policy. Very limited exceptions apply. Refer to the PDS for details.