Part of the valuables cluster. Once the items are in the house, the arrangement is covered by the pillar guide and, for the property itself, the household guide.
More damage happens to collections during a move than in any other circumstance, and the move is the period during which cover is most often assumed rather than arranged. The assumption has a specific shape: that because the removal company is professional, insured and expensive, the goods are covered. What the remover carries is something else entirely.
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.
Liability is not insurance
A removal or shipping company operates under trading conditions that cap its liability — commonly at a fixed sum per item, or per kilogram of the consignment. That cap is not related to what the goods are worth. A painting weighing four kilograms is protected to a figure calculated from four kilograms.
The second constraint is more important. Liability responds only where the company is at fault. It does not respond to heavy weather at sea, to a container fire started by another shipper’s cargo, to theft from a secured yard, to a customs inspection that damages a crate, or to a road accident caused by a third party. In each of those the goods are damaged, nobody at the removal firm has done anything wrong, and the cap never engages.
“Fully insured and bonded” on a removal quotation describes the company’s own trading arrangements. It says nothing about the sum recoverable for your possessions.
What transit cover for a collection looks like
Proper cover is written on declared values, all-risks, from the point the items leave the origin to the point they are placed at the destination — nail to nail, in the art phrase. For significant pieces the values are declared item by item, exactly as they will be on the schedule once the collection is in the house.
The features to check:
- All-risks, not named perils. Transit losses rarely correspond to a listed peril.
- Door to door, including handling. Loading and unloading are where impact damage concentrates.
- Storage included, with the facility declared and a realistic maximum number of days.
- Pairs and sets treated properly, so losing one of a pair does not pay half.
- A general average clause. On sea freight, if cargo is jettisoned or unbudgeted expense is incurred to save the voyage, every consignee contributes in proportion to the value of their goods — even undamaged goods. Marine cover responds to that contribution; a removal firm’s liability does not.
Packing, crating and the conditions that decide claims
Transit claims fail on method more often than on amount. Expect conditions requiring that packing and crating be carried out by a specialist rather than by the owner, to a stated standard: climate-buffered crates for panel paintings, glass taped and corner-protected, sculpture braced rather than wedged, instruments in flight cases, wine in temperature-controlled carriage.
Owner-packed items are widely excluded or sub-limited, on the sound basis that the insurer cannot inspect what went into a box you sealed. If you pack something yourself, say so and expect it to be treated differently.
Two documents make the difference afterwards. A condition report with photographs, prepared before departure, establishes the state of each significant item at the outset — without it, any pre-existing crack becomes a disputed transit claim. And an itemised inventory keyed to the crate numbers lets a partial loss be identified rather than argued about. Both are the same documents needed for the valuation and the eventual schedule, so the work is not duplicated.
Moving a collection to Portugal?
Tell us what is coming and how, and we will set out what transit cover it needs.
Customs, inspection and Portuguese arrival
Goods arriving from outside the EU are subject to inspection, and inspection means crates being opened, sometimes by people whose training is in contraband rather than conservation. Cover should extend to loss or damage during customs examination, and the shipment should be routed through an agent who has handled valuables before.
Items of cultural interest bring an additional layer. Works above certain ages and values may require export licensing from the country of origin, and Portugal applies its own rules to the movement of classified cultural property. That is a compliance question rather than an insurance one, but an item detained at a border for want of a licence is an item sitting in a warehouse, which is very much an insurance question.
Firearms, ivory and protected species materials — frequently present in antique collections, in furniture inlay, instrument fittings and older jewellery — carry their own restrictions and can delay or block a shipment. Identify them at the inventory stage rather than at the port.
The storage gap
Very few moves land straight into the final house. Completion slips, renovation runs late, and the shipment goes into storage — and that is where cover most often quietly lapses. Transit wordings state a maximum period in store, sometimes as little as thirty days, after which the goods are uninsured unless an extension has been agreed.
Storage facilities themselves carry the same liability-not-insurance problem as removers, with the same low caps in their conditions. Declare the facility, confirm in writing that the transit policy covers goods while in store and for how long, and check what the store’s own security and climate control actually are — a warehouse in the Algarve holding furniture, paper and instruments through a summer is a conservation risk quite apart from theft.
Where transit ends and the household policy begins
The last gap is the handover. Transit cover ends on delivery or placement; the household and valuables policy responds only to items at the insured address and, for scheduled pieces, only once they are on the schedule. If the household policy incepts on completion but the collection arrives a week later, or the schedule is not updated for a month while values are confirmed, there is an uninsured window in the middle.
The way to close it is unglamorous and effective: agree in writing the date transit cover ends and the date household cover incepts, make them overlap rather than meet, and get the schedule of items in place before the crates arrive rather than after they are unpacked. That also gives the underwriter time to state security conditions before the collection is in a house that may not yet meet them.
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.
More on this subject: When the insured value stops matching the thing insured