Part of the valuables cluster. This piece deals with what happens after a loss. Where a collection sits relative to a household policy is covered in when an art collection outgrows the household policy. The settlement mechanics apply in Portugal and Spain alike; the Spanish differences are set out towards the end.
Most writing about art insurance stops at the point the cover is bought. The interesting part is what happens afterwards, because art is the one class of insured property where a successful repair can still leave the owner materially worse off, and where the settlement turns on questions a general loss adjuster is not equipped to answer.
What we analyse in a collection
Art, jewellery and watches are insured well only when the policy reflects how each piece is valued, kept and used. We analyse that before approaching the insurers whose underwriting suits the collection.
Valuation and agreed value
Who values the pieces, how often valuations are updated, and whether they are insured on an agreed value or on market value at the time of loss.
Scheduled and unscheduled items
Which pieces must be listed individually, and what limits apply to items that are not listed, per piece and in total.
Where the pieces are kept and worn
At home, in a safe, in a bank vault or when travelling: each location changes the conditions and has to be declared.
Partial loss, restoration and loss of value
How restoration is handled and whether a loss of value after repair is considered.
New acquisitions, loans and transport
How new pieces are added, and what applies to works lent to exhibitions or shipped between countries.
Security and prevention
Alarm, storage and transport conditions that the insurer may set, and how they fit the way the collection is actually used.
What we need to prepare a proposal
- A list of the pieces with recent valuations or purchase invoices.
- Where each piece is kept, and the security there.
- Pieces worn or taken abroad, and how often.
- Any loans, exhibitions or planned transport.
- Your current policy, if there is one.
We assess the risk, analyse the conditions available and look for the protection that fits the collection. All cover is subject to the insurer’s acceptance of the risk and to the terms of the policy issued.
Insurers and specialist partners
Adler & Rochefort works with insurers and specialist partners in the protection of private wealth, including Hiscox, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, Hispania and Innovarisk. The choice of solution depends on the characteristics of the property, the sums insured, its use and the underwriting conditions available. All cover is subject to the insurer’s acceptance of the risk and to the terms of the policy.
Total loss is the easy case
If a work is destroyed or stolen and not recovered, an agreed-value schedule does its job: the figure in the schedule is paid, and there is nothing to negotiate. This is the whole argument for agreed value on art, because the alternative — establishing after the event what a specific work by a specific hand in a specific condition was worth — is an argument with no natural end.
Two details still matter at total loss. The first is salvage and recovery: if a stolen work resurfaces years later, most wordings give the insurer title, with a buy-back right for the original owner at the settled figure, sometimes adjusted. If the work matters to you personally, that clause is worth reading before it becomes relevant. The second is the reinstatement of the sum insured after a partial loss, which some wordings do automatically and others do not.
Partial damage is where policies differ
A canvas punctured by a ladder, a panel cracked by a change in humidity, a bronze knocked from a plinth — the work still exists, and the claim becomes a question of what restoring it costs and what it is worth afterwards.
A well-built art section pays two things. It pays the reasonable cost of restoration by a conservator both sides accept — and the choice of conservator is worth agreeing at inception rather than in the week after a loss. It then pays the loss in value that survives the restoration: the difference between what the work was worth before the damage and what it is worth afterwards, with the intervention disclosed, as any honest sale would disclose it.
A perfect restoration is not a restoration to the previous value. The work now has a documented history of damage, and the market prices that history whether or not the eye can see it.
That second element is the one a general contents section does not carry. It will pay a repair invoice and consider the matter closed. On a signed work with a visible intervention to the paint surface, the residual loss in value can exceed the restoration cost several times over.
Provenance and documentation
Provenance affects the claim twice. It underpins the valuation, so a work whose chain of ownership is documented supports a higher and more defensible agreed value than one bought at a fair without paperwork. It also determines whether a stolen work can be identified and recovered: a piece registered with images, dimensions and distinguishing marks can be circulated and traced, and one described as “oil on canvas, landscape, approx. 60×80” cannot.
For each work, a file should hold a photograph of the front, the back and any signature, stamp or gallery label; the invoice or auction record; a condition report noting existing damage and previous intervention; and the conservation history. Keep it somewhere other than the house that holds the art.
Do the works on your schedule have condition reports?
We will tell you what the underwriter needs and what can wait.
Transit, which is where losses concentrate
Art is most exposed when it moves. Packing, handling, loading, the journey itself, customs inspection, unpacking, and hanging — most physical damage happens in that sequence rather than on the wall. A household policy does not follow a work out of the door beyond a small temporary-removal extension.
What is needed is nail-to-nail cover: from the moment the work leaves the wall at the origin to the moment it is hung at the destination, including intermediate storage. The important conditions are usually about method, not amount — that a specialist fine-art shipper is used, that crating meets a stated standard, and that the work is not left unattended in a vehicle. Cover routinely fails not because the sum was too low but because the work travelled in the back of an estate car after the schedule said it would go by specialist carrier. Bringing a collection into the country for the first time raises a separate set of issues, covered in moving a collection to Portugal.
Exhibition and loans
Lending to a museum or a gallery introduces a second insurer and a loan agreement that usually says the borrower insures. That is often the better arrangement, because institutional cover is broad and the institution controls the risk. What matters is that it is settled in writing before the work leaves: which policy is primary, at what value, whether transit both ways is included, whether the work is covered while in the institution’s store as well as on display, and what happens if the exhibition is extended.
Where both policies would respond, an unresolved overlap does not double the recovery — it produces a contribution argument between two insurers while the lender waits. One line in the loan agreement prevents it.
Storage and environment
Works not on display are frequently worse protected than works on the wall, because storage is where discipline lapses. Underwriters ask about it directly: whether the store is within the insured building or elsewhere, how it is secured, whether relative humidity and temperature are controlled and monitored, whether works are racked or stacked, and whether anything is stored below ground or under plumbing.
Portugal adds two specifics worth naming. Coastal humidity in the Algarve is hard on panel paintings, gilt frames and works on paper, and gradual deterioration from ambient conditions is excluded by every wording — it is a maintenance cost, not a claim. And a property left unoccupied for long stretches, common with second homes, engages the unoccupancy clause, which can suspend theft cover entirely after a stated number of consecutive days.
Portugal and Spain: what changes for a collection
The settlement mechanics described here — restoration by an agreed conservator, depreciation after repair, pair and set, nail-to-nail transit — are specialist-market practice and apply in the same way to a work hanging in Madrid, Marbella or Mallorca as to one in Lisbon or the Algarve. Three things differ in Spain.
- Catastrophe damage is paid by a public body. On Spanish property policies, earthquake, extraordinary flood, atypical windstorm and similar events are covered by the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros, funded through a surcharge on the premium, rather than by the insurer. The Consorcio works from the sums insured in the policy, so the valuation discipline that makes an ordinary claim work matters equally here. In Portugal earthquake is an optional extension; for a collection in Lisbon or the Algarve it is worth taking deliberately.
- Climate is regional. The dry heat of the Spanish interior is hard on panel paintings and furniture in a different way from Atlantic or Mediterranean humidity, and gradual deterioration is excluded in both countries. The environmental questions an underwriter asks follow the house, not the passport.
- Movement across the border. Older works may need an export permit under Spanish heritage law, as under the Portuguese equivalent, before they can leave for a restorer, an exhibition or another home. Build the waiting period into the transit and storage cover.
For owners with homes in both countries, see insuring art in Portugal and Spain and private clients in Spain.
Setting the schedule up so the claim works
Practically, an art schedule that behaves well after a loss has five properties: each work is described well enough to be identified rather than merely listed; values are agreed rather than left to indemnity; restoration cost and residual loss in value are both covered; transit is on a nail-to-nail basis with the method of carriage stated; and the valuations are refreshed on a cycle rather than set once. Everything else is detail. Those five decide whether the claim is a formality or an argument.
Adler & Rochefort is a commercial brand of Ownizo, Unipessoal Lda., registered with the Portuguese Insurance and Pension Funds Supervisory Authority (ASF) under no. 425591790/3. General information only, not personalised advice; cover, sub-limits and conditions vary by underwriter and by risk.