Home Inventory Insurance in Brazil
Insuring your home contents is becoming more common nowadays, especially for people who possess extremely valuable goods. In this article, we will learn more about home contents insurance in Brazil.
Overview
As explained in this article, the Brazilian insurance market is quite an intriguing one. Despite its great potential for growth, it is still very small because Brazilians are not used to insuring themselves and their belongings. Simply put, for Brazilians it is not part of their culture. The market penetration of the insurance industry in Brazil, for example, was only 4% in 2013.
This market is highly concentrated on three sectors, which accounted for 84,4% of the insurance market’s total revenue in 2013:
- Health insurance - 38,4% of the total revenue
- Life and pension insurance - 34,6% of the total revenue
- Vehicle insurance - 11,6% of the total revenue
Home insurance
Basic home contents is usually covered by home insurance in Brazil. According to SUSEP, the Superintendency of Private Insurances in Brazil, home insurance accounted for only 6,8% of all insurance policies, not including any form of life insurance.
Basic home insurance in Brazil covers you from:
- Fire
- Lightning strikes
- Explosions
In addition to these, basic home insurance in Brazil may also offer the following specific cover:
- Robbery and theft - where all goods inside the house are insured against robbery and theft. Valuable goods should be described thoroughly, while other goods, such as furniture, clothing and personal items are insured up to a set amount - chosen by the person who gets the insurance policy - and do not need to be described, unless any of it is valuable for example an expensive cabinet
- Electrical damage caused by short circuit
- Natural phenomena, such as storms and earthquakes
- Airplane crash and vehicle impact
- Smoke
- Glass, like windows or mirrors
- Family liability
- Domestic accidents, serious or not
- Riots, strikes and lockouts
- Floods
- Landslides
Additional Services
Beyond the cover mentioned above, home insurance can also add multiple benefits such as 24 hour assistance services in case of emergencies such as a locksmiths, electricians and plumbers. Depending on the insurance company, there is a limit to the number of assistance services that can be requested in a month, as well as a maximum coverage amount for each assistance service.
The most common type of 24 hour assistance services offered by insurance companies in Brazil are:
- Hydraulic repairs
- Electric repairs
- Unclogging
- Roof tiles replacement
- Locksmith
- Home appliances repair
Basic home insurance costs around BRL 500 per year to insure amounts of around BRL 300.000. Home insurance premiums cost an average of 0,4% of the insured amount, reaching up to 1% depending on the additional guarantees.
Insurance for luxury goods
Valuable objects such as jewelry, paintings, artwork, rarities and objects with large personal value are not usually covered in the home content insurance by insurance companies. In order to insure these objects, it is necessary to take out a specific type of insurance. Exclusive contracts will be made for each object.
The approval and details of the coverage of the insurance are made with the support of evaluation experts who prepare a detailed report on the physical condition of the objects, as well as suggestions for the object’s safety. All this will be done according to the profile of the person getting the insurance policy.
The most complete insurance for luxury home goods in Brazil is called “Seguro multi risco de obras de arte”, which is Portuguese for Multi Risk Insurance for Artworks. This type of insurance has no deductible insurance and provides for losses and damage resulting from any cause, provided that they occurred inside the local indicated in the policy.
The basic cover for this type of insurance covers all the optional specific insurances listed above for home content insurance, as well as acts of bad faith and intentional acts of third parties.
Price setting
While regular home contents insurance does not normally require any previous evaluation by a consultant, the multi risk insurance does require it. Car insurance premiums are set at around 9% of the car value, but multi risk insurance premiums for luxury goods are set between 0,8% and 2% of the evaluated value of the goods. The cost varies mainly according to the places where the objects will be located.