If you are starting to Work From Home, whether it be running your own venture or working for a firm, now is probably an opportune moment to reconsider your home contents insurance cover to be sure your cover is sufficient. The logic behind this is that work from home activities may well involve installing quite a lot of extra furniture and equipment , more so if you will be carrying out Online Jobs, which may require significant amounts of computer hardware and other items of office equipment.

You may be of the opinion that your cover is adequate anyway, that the addition of a few thousand pounds worth of furniture and equipment will make no difference to the cover needed. After all, if you are currently insured for £50,000 contents, you are unlikely to be making claims anywhere near that level. The snag with this approach is that insurance companies take a close look at your amount of cover and if you have under insured they may either limit the amount they will pay on your claim (so called averaging), or they might refuse tosettle your claim at all.

The argument goes as follows. If your contents are valued at £50,000 and you insure for that amount, all is well. But if you then buy a further £10,000 of furniture and equipment for your work from home venture but neglect to review your insurers will take the view that you are underinsured. You should have been paying premiums on £60,000 valuation. So in the event that you make a claim for a damage for £6,000, they will argue that you only paid for cover on £5,000 worth of it, not the full amount as you thought. This is termed averaging. There might even be a clause in your insurance policy saying that your entire claim is null and void.

So if you are equipping yourself for online jobs or other work from home activities, take time to review your insurance cover.