This is the pillar for the valuables cluster. It sets out the three concepts every specialist wording rests on — agreed value, all-risks, and scheduled against unscheduled contents — and links to the object-by-object guides. Cover for the property itself is dealt with in the household guide.
The reason a valuable item ends up uninsured is almost never a decision to leave it uncovered. It is that the owner read the contents sum insured — €200,000, say — and reasonably assumed that a €40,000 item inside that figure was covered for €40,000. Contents wordings in Portugal and Spain do not work that way, and the paragraph that explains why is rarely the one anybody reads.
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.
The single-article limit
A multirriscos policy insures the contents of a home to an overall sum, and then, separately, caps what it will pay for any one item. The cap appears in the condições particulares under a heading such as objectos de valor or bens de valor especial, and it is typically expressed two ways at once: a percentage of the contents sum for the valuables category as a whole, and a fixed euro figure for any single article within it. Both apply. The lower one decides.
The consequence is arithmetical rather than arguable. A collection of jewellery worth €90,000, inside a contents sum of €200,000, against a valuables sub-limit of 20% and a single-article cap of €3,000: the category is capped at €40,000, and no individual piece recovers more than €3,000. The €200,000 is a real figure. It is simply not the figure that governs the ring.
Most contents sections cap any single item at a few thousand euros, whatever the item is worth. The sum insured on the front page does not override it; it is a different number answering a different question.
Everything else in this guide follows from that limit. The three techniques a specialist wording uses — scheduling, agreed value, and all-risks — exist because the blanket approach breaks down as soon as value concentrates in a small number of objects.
Scheduled and unscheduled contents
A well-built policy carries both. Unscheduled contents remain a single blanket sum for everything ordinary: furniture, appliances, clothing, books, the accumulation of a household. A specialist wording usually sets a considerably higher per-item cap here than a retail one — enough that a laptop or a rug does not need listing.
Scheduled items are listed individually in the policy schedule, each with its own sum insured, each described well enough to be identified: maker, date, dimensions, hallmark, serial or movement number, and a photograph on file. The single-article limit does not touch them. In exchange, the description has to be right, because the item you claim for is the item the schedule describes.
Where the line falls is a practical question. Schedule anything above the blanket per-item cap; schedule anything you would actually replace rather than absorb; and schedule anything whose value comes from something a loss adjuster cannot see — provenance, a signature, an unusual restoration history. Everything else is better left unscheduled, where it costs less and needs no paperwork.
Not sure which side of the line your items fall on?
Send a list and we will tell you what needs scheduling and what does not.
Agreed value against indemnity
Portuguese policies default to indemnity: after a loss, the insurer establishes what the item was worth immediately beforehand, applying depreciation, wear and market movement, and pays that. For a three-year-old television this is entirely sensible. For a watch bought in 2009 that now trades at four times its retail price, it produces a settlement calculated from the wrong direction.
On an agreed value basis, the insurer accepts a stated figure at inception, normally against a valuation, and pays that figure after a total loss without reopening the question of worth. The argument about what the item was worth happens in advance, in writing, while the item still exists to be examined — which is the only time either side has good information.
| Indemnity | Agreed value | |
|---|---|---|
| Figure fixed | After the loss, by the insurer | Before the loss, by agreement |
| Evidence needed | Supplied by you, after the item has gone | Supplied at inception, while the item is present |
| Depreciation | Applied | Not applied to the agreed figure |
| Appreciation | Recognised only if you can prove it after the event | Built into the agreed figure, and revisited at renewal |
| Works badly for | Anything rare, restored or appreciating | Anything ordinary — the valuation cost is not worth it |
Agreed value settles the amount, not the entitlement. An item lost through an excluded cause, or while a stated security condition was unmet, is declined regardless of how the value was set. That is why the security conditions attached to a schedule matter as much as the figures on it.
All-risks against named perils
The third concept concerns the cause of loss rather than the amount. A named-perils wording lists the events it responds to — fire, storm, escape of water, theft with forcible entry, and so on. If what happened is not on the list, there is no claim, however genuine the loss.
An all-risks wording inverts the burden: accidental loss of or damage to the insured item is covered unless the policy specifically excludes the cause. The exclusions still matter — wear and tear, gradual deterioration, inherent vice, insect and vermin damage, war, and in most wordings damage occurring during repair, cleaning or restoration — but they are a finite list rather than an open-ended one.
The difference shows up in the losses that actually happen to valuables. A ring that goes down a drain is lost, not stolen. A canvas punctured by a ladder is neither fire nor storm. A watch that falls off a wrist in a car park has met no listed peril at all. Under named perils those are three uninsured losses; under all-risks they are three claims.
What underwriting will ask for
None of these three features is granted on request. Each of them shifts risk toward the underwriter, and the underwriter buys the shift with information.
- A valuation for each scheduled item, with the basis of valuation stated on the face of it — replacement, retail replacement, fair market — because the three produce materially different numbers. Getting a valuation an underwriter will accept covers who can issue one in Portugal and how often it should be refreshed.
- Photographs that identify rather than flatter: hallmarks, signatures, serial and movement numbers, the back of the frame, existing damage.
- Provenance or purchase records where there is no formal valuation, including restoration invoices, which are frequently the largest part of an item’s value and the part a price guide never shows.
- Security as actually installed: safe make and rating, alarm grade, whether it is monitored and by whom, and who holds keys and codes.
- Where the items are, item by item, including any that live at another property, in a bank, or in third-party storage.
- Claims history in full. A declared claim gets priced. An undeclared one, discovered later, puts the whole policy at risk.
Portugal and Spain: one market for valuables
The three concepts above are not Portuguese peculiarities. Spanish household wordings apply the same single-article and aggregate limits to objetos de valor, default to indemnity, and reduce an under-declared claim through the regla proporcional, the counterpart of the Portuguese regra proporcional. Spanish contract law expressly allows a value agreed in the policy, and specialist wordings in both countries use it for scheduled items. The private-client policies we arrange cover scheduled valuables worldwide on an agreed value in either country, so a household with homes in Lisbon and Madrid, or in the Algarve and Marbella, can hold one schedule rather than two.
What differs sits around the schedule rather than in it:
- Catastrophe events. In Spain, earthquake, extraordinary flood and similar events are paid by the Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros, funded by a surcharge on property policies and working from the policy’s own sums insured. In Portugal, earthquake cover is an optional extension.
- Theft definitions. Standard Spanish wordings distinguish robo (with force or violence) from hurto (without), much as Portuguese ones separate roubo from furto. All-risks wording removes the question for scheduled items.
- Liability comes bundled. Spanish home policies usually include family liability, responsabilidad civil familiar, as standard; in Portugal it is more often a narrower property-owner section. Neither changes the valuables analysis, but both belong in the same review — see family liability cover.
For the Spanish side of the arrangement, see private clients in Spain and high-value home insurance in Spain.
Where each type of object goes from here
The three concepts are common to everything; the evidence and the conditions differ sharply by object. Jewellery and watches turn on the single-article limit, the safe rating and whether the piece is worn outside the house. Art turns on what happens after partial damage, and whether the policy pays the loss in value that survives a good restoration. Antiques and collections turn on inventory and on the pair-or-set clause. Instruments turn on whether they are played professionally and how they travel. Wine turns on climate failure, which no named peril describes.
Two cross-cutting pieces apply to all of them: the security conditions written into the schedule, and the discipline of keeping the figures current, because an insured value that has fallen behind reduces a partial claim in exactly the same proportion as a deliberate under-declaration.
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.