If you are starting to Work From Home, whether it be conducting your own venture or working for a firm, now might be the right time to recalculate your household contents insurance policy to make sure your cover is adequate. The logic behind this is that work from home activities will probably involve acquiring quite a lot of additional furniture and equipment , more so if you will be carrying out Online Jobs, which may need significant amounts of computer equipment and other items of office equipment.

You may be tempted into thinking that your cover is adequate anyway, that the extra few thousand pounds worth of furniture and equipment will make no difference to the insurance needed. After all, if you are presently insured for £50,000 contents, you are not likely to be making claims anywhere near that sum. The problem with this approach is that insurance companies take into account your level of cover and in the event that you have under insured they may either reduce the amount they will pay on your claim (so called averaging), or they could refuse tosettle your claim at all.

The logic is as follows. Suppose your contents are worth £50,000 and you insure for that value, all is well. But if you then install a further £10,000 of furniture and equipment for your work from home venture but forget to increase your insurers will take the view that you are underinsured. You ought to have been paying premiums on £60,000 valuation. So in the event that you make a claim for a damage for £6,000, they will argue that you only paid for insurance on £5,000 worth of it, not the full amount as you thought. This is called averaging. There could even be a clause in your insurance policy to say that your whole claim is null and void.

So if you are setting up yourself for online jobs or other work from home activities, take time to review your insurance policy.