Watch Insurnace Question

B bmathe02

Hello,

I have watch insurance through Lavalier. They require an appraisal or purchase receipt to insure. My watches have since increased in value...... not a lot lets say a grand. Lavalier wants me to reappraise to increase my policy. Can I just continue to pay my Lavalier payments but also take out insurance from Hodinkee which I believe is done all online and does not require an appraisal. The policy premium I pay a year is less than what it will cost me to apprise my watch in NYC.

Basically is it against policy or insurnace fraud to have multiple policies on one item?

Thanks for your input.

PatinaPete

Not sure if you found your answer, but the process would be as follows: the initial policy, Lavalier, would be the in-force policy up to it's limit, Then, the Hodinkee/Chubb policy would kick in for any remainder up to the insured limit/loss limit. The reason this is so, is because the Lavalier policy is likely not enough to cover the full replacement, and the Chubb policy is a full replacement value policy.

In the Chubb policy documentation, it specifically says their insurance will kick in after all other forms of insurance are exhausted. This happens often when there are other umbrella policies - homeowners, renters, even vehicle policies that may cover the item that have a priority, but also have some arbitrary limit. For example, you have a homeowners policy that covers jewelry up to $2500. You would take a rider normally to get up to say $10,000 if you had that much jewelry, or, you would take a policy with Chubb. The first 2500 of your loss is paid by your homeowner agency and then the rest is paid by Chubb. So the above would occur the same way. This is not illegal, it's just stacked policies to get to the right coverage level.

The only requirement, is that the Hodinkee/Chubb policy is taken out for the entire amount - not just the difference. So if you need to ensure $10000 total, then that's what you insure with Hodinkee/Chubb, even though a portion of that is also insured by Lavalier. I know that seems silly, but that's the grease that keeps the wheels turning.