What you need to know about insuring your home valuables

Though insuring home values is a common trend in Malawian, considering that over half of the population resides in the rural areas, it has been defined as a self storage by many. Having your valuables, including the house insured, is one of the most important ways of having peace of mind. With stories of fire blazing almost anything, including markets, and burglaries, insuring property is a step in the right direction, as Paida Mpaso finds out.

Be it your personal valuables or other belongings, with life’s unpredictably, the need and importance of insurance cannot be ignored. In fact, insurance companies believe that insuring your valuables, or any kind of property for that matter, will make you rest assured that your property is safe. That way, when something unexpectedly happens, you are assured that the money you spent on buying your property will be reimbursed.

Real Insurance manager responsible for direct clients, Jack Majejuka, says insurance is not only required for safeguarding your valuables from theft. He says the risk of theft is greatly reduced when the products are stored somewhere safe but there are other risks which could destroy your property when you least expect them.

“For instance, there are some natural calamities like floods, fire and storms which pose a threat to your property,” he points out.

He directs us to one of their clients, the Banda couple, who never thought insurance was important until their house was burnt and property worth over K2 000 000 (about $13 157) went up in flames.  Though they had no insurance cover, they were lucky that some people were able to come to their rescue. Even worse was the fact that they were living in a rented house.

“If no one had come to our rescue, we would have been impoverished and up to our eyeballs in debt right now because everything in the house went with the fire. Both my husband and I do not work but we were grateful that people were able to help. However, I know that there are some people who have had to go through such situations on their own, which is unfortunate,” Mrs. Banda says.

“Since then we have been trying to raise some money so that we can insure our valuables, especially those which are somewhat expensive,” she adds.

According to Majejuka, Real Insurance has got several policies to suit their customer’s needs on an annual basis. 

“For those people who have houses, we are able to provide some kind of security, we also have policies which could be extended to property in the house. However, this only covers risks like the one I have already mentioned. But there are certain policies which could also cover valuables through accidents,” he said.

In addition, to show the importance of women, Real Insurance has got a special insurance cover, especially for the women. Majejuka says in their real lady insurance, women are able to get a whole lot of other benefits by just joining.

“If a lady joins and has been involved in an accident, upon claiming we automatically compensate her and while we are processing the claims we provide her with a vehicle. By joining this kind of insurance, she becomes entitled to about four benefits in this package meant for women,” he says.