How to Make a Contents Insurance Claim: The 3 Things You Must Prove

Having spent 25 years managing insurance claims, I've witnessed many tragedies but one of the most common is completely avoidable.

People seem to pay the same amount of care and attention to their contents insurance as they do to the safety video that plays just before their flight takes off. It's far easier and more comforting to believe that nothing bad is going to happen to you than to prepare for the possibility that it might.

And so they discover, only after the plane goes down, that they have no idea how to open the emergency exit or inflate their life vest, or in the context of insurance, they have no idea how they are going to document and prove everything they have now lost because it's gone.

When they eventually do start to pull a list together the next realisation hits home. They had nowhere near enough cover. By then, it's too late.

The Reality of Making a Valid Claim

Here's the reality worth understanding: to make a valid claim, you have to establish what's called a prima facie claim. That requires 3 things, and the burden is on you to prove them, not your insurer:

1. That you owned what you're claiming for
2. That an insured event actually occurred
3. The value of the items claimed

Prove those three, and the law flips the burden onto your insurer to either settle the claim or prove an exclusion applies. It's really that simple.

The Underinsurance Trap

People also love blaming affordability for underinsurance, but in my experience, it's less about that and more about misunderstanding what's actually covered under contents and what's covered under building. Many don't fully appreciate the true replacement cost of what they own until they're standing in the ashes trying to work it all out.

If you're ever unlucky enough to live through a fire, flood, or some other tragedy, finding all this out in that moment is the last thing you need. When people are displaced from their homes, getting it fixed so they can get back home becomes their main priority. Trying to compile a list of everything they owned while staying in a motel or apartment gets pushed to the bottom of the list.

It's only when it's time to move back home that they realise they have no bed to sleep in, nothing to sit on, no curtains for privacy. They are missing the things that made their house a home.

Establish Your Prima Facie Case Before Disaster Strikes

I've watched too many people learn all this the hard way now and that's why I created VerifAEye.

VerifAEye does the hard work for you, so that in hardly any time at all, you have 2 of the 3 things needed to establish a prima facie claim, long before you ever need it. The only other thing you need is an insured event to occur. VerifAEye can't help make that happen and I'm sure you're okay with that. If one day you do need to lodge a claim though, that's when you'll thank me, especially when you see how easy I've made that for you too.

Please remember to create your own inventory before helping others with theirs.

Thank you for your attention, please enjoy your flight.

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The proof is in the detail. Start your inventory today.