Part of the collections and valuables cluster. The mechanics of scheduling and agreed value are in the pillar guide.
A household policy is written around an address. Everything in it — the sum insured, the security conditions, the perils, the excess — assumes the property is at that address. The moment something leaves, a different and much smaller set of provisions applies, and most owners have never read them.
The temporary removal extension
Portuguese contents wordings follow possessions out of the house through a temporary-removal clause. It is real cover, and it is narrow. Typical shape:
- A percentage of the contents sum — often 10% to 15% — as the total available away from the address.
- A maximum number of consecutive days away, commonly 30 or 60.
- A territorial restriction, sometimes to Portugal, sometimes to the EU.
- The same single-article limit as the main contents section, which is the constraint that matters.
- Named perils rather than all-risks, so loss is not covered and theft may require forcible entry.
That last pair is the reason the extension rarely helps for anything significant. It is designed for a suitcase of clothes and a laptop, and it answers those well enough.
Scheduled items on a worldwide all-risks basis
The arrangement that actually follows you is a schedule of items written worldwide, all-risks, with agreed values. Each piece is listed with its own sum, the single-article limit does not apply to it, and cover responds wherever it is and to accidental loss as well as theft.
For jewellery and watches this is the main reason to schedule at all, and the position is set out in the single-article limit and why it decides everything. For cameras, sporting equipment, laptops used away from home and instruments, the same structure applies with different conditions attached.
The question to ask about any valuable item is not what it is insured for. It is where it is insured, and whether that matches where it actually goes.
The conditions that decide the claim
Worldwide cover is not unconditional, and the conditions are consistent across the market because the loss patterns are.
| Situation | Typical position |
|---|---|
| Item in hand baggage | Covered |
| Item in checked luggage | Excluded or heavily sub-limited |
| Item in a hotel room | Covered, often conditional on using the room or hotel safe |
| Item in an unattended vehicle | Excluded, or restricted to a locked boot in daylight with forcible entry |
| Item left with a third party for repair or cleaning | Usually excluded — the repairer’s liability applies instead |
| Item away beyond the stated day limit | Outside cover for the excess period |
| Item at an undeclared second address | Outside cover — the address should be declared |
The unattended-vehicle exclusion deserves its own line because it produces more declined claims than the rest combined. A bag containing a camera and a watch, taken from a car at a beach car park in the Algarve, is uninsured under almost every wording in the market.
Items that travel with you?
Send us a list and we will set out what has to be scheduled and what the travel conditions would be.
Travel insurance is a different instrument
Travel policies are built around medical costs, cancellation, delay and repatriation. Their baggage sections exist to settle a lost suitcase and carry per-item limits well below the value of anything discussed here, often with a further cap on valuables as a category.
They are worth holding for what they do well. They are not a substitute for possessions cover, and the practical rule is to hold both and claim on whichever responds better — noting that you cannot recover twice for the same loss, and that both insurers will ask whether other cover exists.
Second homes and items that live elsewhere
Cover follows declared locations. A holiday home in another country, a flat kept for a child at university, a store unit, or a relative’s house where part of a collection is kept — each is an address, and each needs declaring and rating. This is different from taking a watch on holiday: it is property permanently situated somewhere the insurer has never been told about.
Where the second home is in Portugal, the unoccupancy clause usually bites as well, and where it is abroad, the policy’s territorial scope has to reach it. Neither is difficult to arrange in advance and both are impossible to fix afterwards.
Moving house, moving items
Possessions in transit during a move are a separate exposure, and the removal company’s liability is not insurance — it is a capped, fault-based obligation set by its trading conditions. The gap, and what to do about it, is covered in moving a collection to Portugal.
Getting the schedule to match reality
The recurring failure in this class is a schedule that describes a household as it was when the policy was written. Items are acquired and not notified; a watch worn daily is listed as kept in a safe; a piece has effectively lived at a second home for two years. None of these is dishonesty and all of them reduce a claim.
The fix is an annual read-through of the schedule against where things actually are and how they are actually used — the same review that keeps valuations current, done at the same time.
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.