Does Home Insurance Cover Theft? What Is Covered

Does home insurance cover theft? Yes, on essentially every standard policy, and more broadly than most owners realize, because the coverage follows your belongings rather than your address. A television taken from your living room, a laptop taken from a hotel room in another state, and a bicycle taken from a rack outside a coffee shop can all be the same claim on the same policy. The question that actually decides what you recover is not whether theft is covered. It is how much of your loss survives the special limits buried inside the personal property section.

That is what this coverage note works through. It covers the personal property coverage that pays, the off-premises extension that follows you when you travel, the sub-limits that quietly cap jewelry, watches, furs, firearms, silverware, cash, and collectibles, the scheduling endorsement that gets past them, why replacement cost versus actual cash value matters more on a theft claim than on a structural one, proving ownership when the receipts are gone, mysterious disappearance, vacant homes, tenants, the damage a burglar causes getting in, the police report, and what a claim does to your premium. Where a neighboring peril takes over, it hands off: our coverage note on what home insurance covers for the full six-part map, and our coverage note on fire damage for the peril that destroys rather than removes. Run your own numbers in the companion below as you read.

The short answer: does home insurance cover theft?

Here is the whole subject compressed before it gets taken apart. Theft appears as a named peril on the standard homeowners forms, so when someone takes your belongings, your personal property coverage responds, subject to your limit, your deductible, and a set of category caps. Damage the thief caused breaking in is repaired under your dwelling coverage as part of the same loss. The coverage applies whether the theft happened inside your home, in your yard, in your car, or two thousand miles away in a rented room.

What the policy will not do is pay the full replacement value of the categories most likely to be stolen. Standard forms cap jewelry, watches, cash, coins, precious metals, firearms, and silverware at figures set decades ago and rarely revisited. A burglary that removes an illustrative $38,000 of property can settle for well under two thirds of that once those caps apply, and none of your ordinary contents limit rescues it. Our note on reading a declarations page shows where those limits are actually printed. Every dollar figure below is illustrative, chosen to show shape rather than to describe your policy.

What counts as theft on a homeowners policy

Policies rarely define theft narrowly. In practice, insurers treat it as the taking of your property by someone else with the intent to permanently deprive you of it, which covers burglary with forced entry, theft without forced entry through an unlocked door, shoplifting-style removal by someone who was invited in, and robbery involving force or threat. Attempted theft usually counts too, which matters because a burglar who breaks a door, gets startled, and leaves has still caused a covered loss even though nothing left the house.

Vandalism and malicious mischief are commonly listed alongside theft as their own named peril, so a break-in that damages far more than it removes is still covered. The concepts that fall outside are worth naming early: property you handed over voluntarily because you were deceived is often treated as fraud rather than theft, property lost or misplaced is not theft at all, and property taken by someone who lives in your household usually sits outside coverage. Each of those gets its own section below, because each is where real claims get denied.

The coverage that actually pays: personal property

Coverage C, personal property, is the part of the policy that pays for stolen belongings. It insures the things inside your home that are not attached to it: furniture, clothing, electronics, appliances that are not built in, tools, sporting goods, kitchenware, and everything in your drawers and closets. The limit is commonly set as a percentage of the dwelling limit, an illustrative 50% to 70%, so a $350,000 dwelling limit typically implies an illustrative $175,000 to $245,000 of contents coverage on a homeowners policy.

That headline figure is almost never the number that constrains a theft claim. Total burglaries that reach six figures of contents are rare, while burglaries that hit an illustrative $20,000 to $50,000 are not, and every one of those runs straight into the sub-limits rather than the overall cap. The practical result is that raising your contents limit does nothing for the categories that were actually taken. Our coverage note on what home insurance covers walks the six parts in order, and the companion below lets you split an illustrative theft loss into capped and uncapped property to see how much of it survives.

Theft away from home: the off-premises extension

Personal property coverage follows your possessions rather than your address, which is one of the most useful and least understood features of a homeowners policy. If a suitcase is stolen from a hotel room, a camera is taken from a rental car, or a laptop disappears from a shared workspace, your home policy is typically the one that responds. The same applies to a child’s belongings at college, which many policies extend to cover while the student is enrolled and living in campus housing.

Most policies apply a reduced limit off the premises, commonly an illustrative 10% of your personal property limit or a stated minimum, whichever is greater. On an illustrative $200,000 contents limit that implies roughly $20,000 of off-premises coverage, which is generous for a holiday and thin for a household in transit during a move. The special category caps apply off-premises too, so jewelry stolen from a hotel safe is subject to the same illustrative $1,500 theft limit it would face at home. Confirm both the percentage and the minimum on your own policy, since the wording varies more here than almost anywhere else.

The special limits that quietly cap a theft claim

Inside your personal property coverage sits a short list of categories with their own much smaller limits. Insurers apply them because these items are compact, valuable, easy to remove, hard to verify after the fact, and attractive to thieves, which makes them expensive and difficult to underwrite at full value inside a general contents limit. The commonly seen categories are jewelry, watches, and furs; money, bank notes, coins, and precious metals; securities and deeds; firearms; silverware and goldware; business property kept at home; and sometimes fine art, antiques, and collections.

Three properties of these caps cause most of the damage. They are aggregate rather than per item, so one stolen ring can exhaust the whole jewelry category. Several of them apply specifically to theft rather than to all perils, which is why the same necklace can be treated differently in a fire than in a burglary. And they do not scale with your contents limit, so a household that doubled its coverage still has the same illustrative $1,500 of jewelry theft protection it had before. Model your own split of capped and uncapped property in the companion below.

Jewelry, watches, and furs: the cap that surprises people most

This is the category that generates the angriest phone calls. A standard policy commonly limits theft of jewelry, watches, and furs to an illustrative $1,500, with some forms at $2,500 and some insurers offering modest increases by endorsement. The figure is a total for the category, not per piece, and it applies no matter how many items were taken. An engagement ring, a pair of inherited earrings, and a watch that together carry an illustrative $9,000 replacement value can settle for that same illustrative $1,500.

The pattern is worse than the number suggests, because jewelry is disproportionately what burglars take. It is small, portable, immediately saleable, and usually kept in the one piece of furniture every burglar opens first. Owners who assume their contents limit protects them find out at the worst possible moment that it never applied. If the jewelry in your home is worth more than the cap, and for most married households it is, scheduling is not an optimization, it is the difference between a real recovery and a token one. Read the exact figure on your own declarations page rather than assuming the illustrative one used here.

Cash, precious metals, and collectible coins

Money is the most severely limited category on the policy. Standard forms commonly cap money, bank notes, gold other than goldware, silver other than silverware, platinum, and coins at an illustrative $200 to $500 in total, and that cap applies regardless of what was actually taken. A few thousand dollars kept in a drawer, an envelope of emergency cash, or a stack of bills in a home safe is effectively uninsured. The reason is simple: cash is impossible to verify after it is gone, and a category that cannot be verified invites claims that cannot be tested.

The trap that catches collectors is that a coin collection is usually swept into this cash cap rather than treated as a collectible. A numismatic collection carrying an illustrative $5,000 of value can recover the same illustrative $200 as loose change in a jar, because the policy sees coins, not collectibles. Precious metal bullion sits in the same place. If you hold either in quantity, the practical answers are a safe deposit box, a specialist collectibles policy, or a scheduling endorsement your insurer will write only after appraisal.

Firearms, silverware, and collectibles

Firearms usually carry their own theft cap, commonly an illustrative $2,500 in total for guns and related equipment. A single modern rifle or a pair of handguns with optics can pass that figure without being a collection, and a genuine collection passes it many times over. As with jewelry, the cap is aggregate, so an owner with several firearms is insured for a fraction of what a burglar would take. Insurers will typically schedule firearms individually, and many will require a serial number list and evidence of secure storage before they do.

Silverware, goldware, and pewterware sit in their own category, commonly capped at an illustrative $2,500 for theft. Inherited flatware services are the usual casualty here, because a full service can be worth several times the cap and almost nobody thinks of it as insurance-relevant property until it is gone. Fine art, antiques, musical instruments, sports memorabilia, and trading card collections are treated inconsistently: some forms cap them, others cover them within the general contents limit but leave you unable to prove value. Scheduling with an appraisal solves both problems at once.

Business property and electronics kept at home

Business property in the home has its own limit, commonly an illustrative $2,500 on premises and considerably less off premises. That matters far more than it used to, because the line between a home office and a household is now blurry in most houses. A laptop used for work, a camera used for freelance jobs, a set of trade tools, and inventory for a side business can all be classified as business property and capped, even though the owner thinks of them as ordinary belongings. Our coverage note on insuring a home-based business covers the endorsements that fix this.

Personal electronics are usually not capped by category, which is a relief, but they are heavily depreciated under actual cash value settlement, which is the next problem. A four-year-old laptop that costs an illustrative $1,400 to replace may settle for a few hundred dollars under actual cash value. Because electronics are among the first things a burglar takes, this settlement question hits theft claims harder than it hits most other losses. It is worth checking which basis your policy uses before you need to know.

Scheduling personal property to get past the caps

A scheduled personal property endorsement, sometimes called a personal articles floater, lists individual items on your policy at agreed values, usually supported by an appraisal or a receipt. It is the standard mechanism for getting past the category caps, and it changes the claim in four ways at once. The cap no longer applies, since the item has its own stated amount. The deductible commonly does not apply, so a stolen ring pays from the first dollar. The covered perils are usually broader, often including accidental loss and disappearance, which unscheduled property does not get. And the value is agreed in advance rather than argued after.

That last point deserves weight. On an unscheduled claim you are proving both that you owned the item and what it was worth, from memory, after it is gone. On a scheduled item the value question was settled when the appraisal was accepted. For anyone holding a handful of pieces that represent a large share of their contents value, scheduling converts the most contested part of a theft claim into the least contested part. Test the effect on your own numbers in the companion below.

What scheduling costs and when it earns its keep

Pricing is quoted per hundred dollars of insured value per year and varies by item type, by where you live, and by how the item is stored. Jewelry commonly sits at an illustrative $1 to $2 per $100 of value annually, which puts an illustrative $9,000 of jewelry at roughly $90 to $180 a year. Fine art and collectibles usually price lower per hundred dollars because they are stolen less often, while firearms and cameras vary widely by insurer. Some insurers reduce the rate where items are kept in a bank vault or a rated safe.

The arithmetic is unusually clear for an insurance decision. Scheduling an illustrative $9,000 of jewelry converts a maximum recovery of $1,500 into a maximum recovery of $9,000, so the endorsement buys an illustrative $7,500 of additional protection for an illustrative $90 to $180 a year. Very few insurance decisions have a ratio that clean. The judgment call is which items to schedule, and the honest answer is the small number that would genuinely hurt to lose and that a burglar could carry out in a pocket. Confirm current rates with your own insurer, since they change and vary by market.

Replacement cost versus actual cash value on a theft claim

Settlement basis decides how much of the surviving claim you actually receive. Under actual cash value, each item pays its depreciated worth, so a five-year-old television pays what a five-year-old television is worth rather than what a new one costs. Under replacement cost, the insurer typically pays the depreciated amount first and releases the held-back depreciation once you have genuinely replaced the item and submitted proof. Our note on actual cash value versus replacement cost works the mechanic in full.

This distinction bites harder on theft than on most other perils, and the reason is what thieves take. A fire destroys a representative slice of a household, including furniture and fixtures that hold value. A burglary removes a concentrated selection of electronics, bicycles, tools, clothing, and handbags, which is close to a list of the fastest-depreciating property in the house. On an illustrative $23,800 of surviving contents claim, an actual cash value settlement might pay an illustrative 55% of that, roughly $13,000, while replacement cost eventually pays the full amount. Switch the settlement selector in the companion below to see the gap on your own figures.

Proving you owned it when the receipts are gone

The contents portion of a theft claim is where the process becomes exhausting, because the insurer needs a list of what left the house and the burglar took the evidence with it. You will typically be asked for a room-by-room inventory with descriptions, approximate age, original cost, and quantity, and for high-value items you may be asked for something closer to proof. Doing that from memory, days after a violation of your home, is genuinely hard, and it is where people quietly abandon the tail of smaller items and leave real money unclaimed.

Reconstruct rather than recall. Card and bank statements show purchases going back years. Online order histories are close to a ready-made inventory for anyone who shops that way. Warranty registrations, repair records, appraisals, and manuals in cloud storage establish electronics and jewelry. Ordinary photographs taken inside your home capture furniture, art, and decor in the background, and relatives often have images you do not. Our note on building a home inventory sets out the method to use before a loss, which takes about an hour and is worth more than any amount of reconstruction afterwards.

Damage the burglar caused getting in

Physical damage caused during a break-in is covered, and it usually sits on the dwelling side of the policy rather than the contents side. A forced door, a splintered frame, a broken window, a damaged lock, a cut screen, a pried patio slider, and a hole in a wall are repairs to the structure, paid under Coverage A. Damage to a detached garage or a shed falls under Coverage B, other structures. Vandalism the intruder inflicted while inside is normally covered on the same basis, as its own named peril alongside theft.

The important mechanic is that this is one occurrence, not two claims. A single deductible generally applies to the whole loss even though it touches two coverage parts, which occasionally flips the economics of a small burglary. An illustrative $2,400 of entry damage added to a modest contents loss can lift a claim above a deductible that the contents alone would never have cleared. Photograph the damage before anything is boarded up or repaired, keep the receipts for any emergency securing you pay for, and mention the entry damage explicitly when you report the loss, because it is easy for it to fall out of a claim focused on what was stolen.

Theft from a car, a hotel room, or a dorm

Belongings taken from inside a parked car are generally covered by your homeowners or renters personal property coverage, not by your auto policy, because home coverage follows your possessions. A stolen laptop, a camera bag, a coat, or a set of golf clubs from the back seat is usually a home claim. What your homeowners policy does not touch is the vehicle itself, permanently installed equipment, or parts bolted to it, which fall to the comprehensive portion of an auto policy if you carry it. A smashed window is auto as well.

Hotel rooms, rented apartments, cruise cabins, and campus housing all sit inside the off-premises extension. Students living in university accommodation are commonly covered under a parent’s policy while enrolled, though the wording varies and some insurers exclude off-campus rentals. Two practical points apply everywhere: the reduced off-premises limit applies, and so do all the category caps, so jewelry taken from a hotel room faces the same illustrative $1,500 ceiling. Where two policies could respond, confirm which one is primary before filing both and paying two deductibles.

Bicycles, tools, and things taken from the yard or shed

Bicycles are covered as ordinary personal property, on premises and off, and they are also one of the most frequently stolen categories in any household. Standard policies usually do not apply a special cap to them, but two things reduce recovery in practice: depreciation under actual cash value, and a deductible that often exceeds the value of a mid-range bike. A high-value bicycle behaves like jewelry in economic terms and is worth scheduling for the same reasons, particularly if it is regularly locked up in public.

Tools, garden equipment, grills, patio furniture, and anything else kept outside or in a detached structure are covered too, though tools used in a trade may be reclassified as business property and capped. Detached structures themselves are insured under Coverage B, typically at an illustrative 10% of the dwelling limit. The pattern worth noticing is that unsecured outdoor property produces frequent, small claims, and small claims are precisely the ones where filing can cost more than it recovers. Our note on lowering your premium covers the deductible choice that makes those claims economic or not.

Mysterious disappearance and why it is usually excluded

Mysterious disappearance is property that is simply gone: no forced entry, no witness, no known time or place, no evidence that anyone took it. Many standard policies exclude it outright, and where the exclusion is not explicit, insurers commonly decline claims they cannot distinguish from a misplaced item. The logic is not that they assume you are lying. It is that a peril nobody can test is a peril nobody can price, and a theft policy that also paid for lost items would be a very different and much more expensive product.

The practical line is evidence. A ring taken during a documented break-in with a police report is a straightforward claim. The same ring absent from a bathroom counter with no explanation is close to unclaimable on an unscheduled policy. This is one of the strongest arguments for scheduling, because many scheduled personal property endorsements are written on an all-risk basis broad enough to include accidental loss and disappearance. If that is why you are scheduling, ask for the covered perils in writing rather than assuming, since the breadth varies between insurers.

Theft by a guest, a housemate, or someone working in the home

Theft by a visitor is generally covered. A guest at a party, a friend of a friend, a delivery driver, or a contractor who takes something is a covered theft, though the claim can attract closer scrutiny where no forced entry occurred. Theft by an employee you engaged, such as a cleaner or a caregiver, is usually covered as well, and separate bonding is a different product aimed at businesses rather than households.

The exclusion sits closer to home. Standard policies generally exclude theft by an insured, and the definition of insured commonly includes residents of your household and relatives who live with you. That means property taken by a spouse during a separation, by an adult child living at home, or by a housemate named on the policy usually falls outside coverage entirely. Roommates who are not named on the policy are a different case: they are typically not insureds, so theft by them may be covered, but they also have no coverage of their own under your policy. Roommates each need their own renters policy, which our note on renters insurance sets out.

Theft from a vacant home or a house under construction

Vacancy is the condition most likely to void a theft claim outright. Standard policies restrict or suspend coverage once a home has been vacant beyond a stated period, commonly an illustrative 30 to 60 days, and theft and vandalism are usually the first perils to be cut off. Insurers apply it because an empty house is a far higher risk on exactly those perils: nobody notices a broken window, nobody hears an entry, and the loss is discovered long after it happened.

The situations that trigger it are ordinary rather than exotic. A property waiting to sell after the owner has moved out, an inherited house going through probate, a seasonal home shut for the off season, a rental between tenants, and a house emptied for a long renovation all qualify. The fixes are administrative rather than expensive: a vacancy permit endorsement on the existing policy, a dedicated vacant property policy, or a builder’s risk policy during construction. What does not work is assuming your policy still applies because the premium is still being paid. Our note on what happens when coverage lapses covers the adjacent gap.

Renters, landlords, and who insures what

In a rented home the division is clean and frequently misunderstood. The landlord’s policy insures the building, the fixtures, and the landlord’s liability. It does not insure a single item belonging to the tenant. A burglary at a rented apartment therefore leaves the tenant’s entire contents loss on the tenant’s own renters policy, and where there is no renters policy, on the tenant.

Renters policies cover theft on the same personal property basis a homeowners policy uses, with the same off-premises extension and the same category caps on jewelry, cash, firearms, and silverware. The settlement question matters even more here, because the cheapest renters policies are often written on actual cash value, which pays depreciated value on exactly the electronics and furniture a burglar takes. Renters policies also carry personal liability, which our note on homeowners liability coverage explains. Landlords who furnish a rental should note the reverse: furniture they own in a tenanted unit needs to be scheduled or specifically covered, because a standard landlord policy is not built for it.

The police report and the sworn proof of loss

Report the theft to the police before you report it to your insurer. Almost every policy requires notification of the authorities for a theft claim, and the report number is one of the first things the adjuster will ask for. It establishes a date, a location, and an independent record that the loss occurred, which is the evidence a theft claim otherwise lacks entirely. File it even where you expect nothing to be recovered, and ask how to add items to the report later, because your list of what is missing will grow for days.

The insurer will then usually require a sworn statement in proof of loss, a signed document listing the property, its value, and the circumstances, submitted within a stated window that is often an illustrative 60 days. Take that document seriously. It is sworn, it defines the claim, and inflating it converts a covered loss into an insurance fraud problem that can void the policy. List what you actually lost, value it honestly, keep a copy of everything you send, and put every material exchange in writing. Our note on filing a home insurance claim walks the sequence step by step.

Your deductible against the special limits

Your deductible is the amount removed from a covered loss before the insurer pays, and on a theft claim it interacts with the caps in a way worth understanding. The caps apply first, reducing the claim to what the policy will actually recognize, and the deductible then comes off that reduced figure rather than off the original value of what was taken. On an illustrative loss where $38,000 of property and $2,400 of entry damage reduce to $26,200 of recognized loss, an illustrative $1,000 deductible leaves an illustrative $25,200 paid.

That ordering is why raising your deductible is a much smaller lever on theft claims than fixing your sub-limits is. Moving from an illustrative $1,000 to $2,500 deductible saves premium and costs you $1,500 on a large claim, while scheduling your jewelry can add an illustrative $7,500 to the same claim. Our note on what a deductible is covers the mechanic, and our note on choosing between a $500 and a $1,000 deductible works the trade-off. Set your own deductible in the companion below to see how small a share of a real burglary it represents.

Will a theft claim raise your premium?

Usually, yes. Insurers treat a paid claim as information about future losses, and theft claims carry the added signal of location and security, which is not something the policyholder can easily change. An illustrative increase of 9% to 20% at renewal, held for an illustrative three to five years, is a pattern commonly described in this market. On an illustrative $1,900 annual premium that is roughly $170 to $380 a year, or an illustrative $510 to $1,900 over the period. A claim-free discount you lose at the same time makes the effective cost higher still.

Run the arithmetic before filing a small claim. An illustrative $2,600 loss against a $1,000 deductible nets $1,600, which the premium effect can consume entirely. A $25,200 payout is a completely different calculation and is exactly what the policy exists for. The dividing line sits closer to the deductible than most people assume. Our note on how much premiums rise after a claim covers the mechanics, including how long a claim stays visible to other insurers when you shop.

Locks, alarms, and the discounts that follow them

Insurers commonly discount for protective devices, and the theft-relevant ones are deadbolts, a monitored burglar alarm, and sometimes smart locks or a monitored camera system. Illustrative discounts of 2% to 5% for deadbolts and local alarms, and up to an illustrative 10% to 15% for a centrally monitored system, are figures often cited, though they vary widely by insurer and state and are usually smaller than the marketing suggests. Ask your insurer which specific devices qualify before buying anything for the discount alone, and ask what documentation they require.

The risk reduction is the better reason. Most residential burglaries are opportunistic, and the interventions that matter are ordinary: locking doors and windows including the second-floor ones reachable from a garage roof, a solid door with a reinforced strike plate, exterior lighting, keeping deliveries from sitting visibly on a porch, and not storing jewelry in the bedroom dresser that every burglar opens first. A rated safe bolted down helps for documents and small valuables, but it does not change the cash cap. Scheduling is what changes the cap.

A worked example: one burglary, itemized

Put the pieces together on one illustrative household. The Novaks are away for a weekend. Someone forces the back door, works through the ground floor and the main bedroom, and leaves within minutes. Nobody is home and nobody is hurt. The police take a report the same evening. What is gone: jewelry and watches with an illustrative $9,000 replacement value, an illustrative $800 in cash from a drawer, an illustrative $5,000 collectible coin set, a shotgun worth an illustrative $2,800, an inherited silverware service worth an illustrative $3,500, two laptops and a camera at $4,600, a television and sound system at $3,200, two bicycles at $2,900, handbags and coats at $4,200, and power tools from the detached garage at $2,000. The illustrative total is $38,000, plus $2,400 of damage to the door, frame, and a window.

Now the caps. The jewelry recovers an illustrative $1,500 against $9,000. Cash recovers $200 against $800. The coin set is treated as coins, not collectibles, so it recovers $200 against $5,000. The shotgun recovers $2,500 against $2,800. The silverware recovers $2,500 against $3,500. The uncapped property, meaning the electronics, television, bicycles, clothing, and tools, recovers in full at an illustrative $16,900. The recognized contents loss is therefore $23,800, not $38,000. The caps removed an illustrative $14,200.

Now the payment. Add the illustrative $2,400 of entry damage under the dwelling coverage, giving a recognized loss of $26,200, take off the illustrative $1,000 deductible, and the policy pays an illustrative $25,200 on a $40,400 event. The Novaks absorb $15,200, of which the deductible is $1,000 and the sub-limits are $14,200. Had they scheduled the jewelry, the coins, and the silverware for an illustrative $150 to $250 a year in total, they would have added back an illustrative $13,300. And had their contents been written on actual cash value rather than replacement cost, the $23,800 would have settled nearer an illustrative $13,000. Run your own version in the companion below by setting the total taken, how much of it sits in the capped categories, the entry damage, your deductible, and your settlement basis.

The bottom line

Does home insurance cover theft? Yes, on essentially every standard homeowners and renters policy, and it covers more than people expect: belongings taken from inside the house, from the yard, from a shed, from a parked car, from a hotel room, and from a dorm, plus the damage the burglar caused getting in, all under one deductible. The problem is never the peril. It is the special limits sitting inside personal property coverage, which commonly cap jewelry theft at an illustrative $1,500, cash and coins at $200 to $500, and firearms and silverware at $2,500 each, aggregate rather than per item, unmoved by how large your contents limit is. Those caps removed an illustrative $14,200 from the $40,400 worked example above, fourteen times what the deductible cost. Read the special limits section of your own policy tonight rather than after a break-in, schedule the handful of items that would genuinely hurt to lose, confirm you are on replacement cost rather than actual cash value, build the inventory with our home inventory note, understand the settlement mechanic with our note on actual cash value versus replacement cost, and size your own exposure in the companion below while it is still a hypothetical.

This coverage note is educational reading about how standard homeowners and renters policies commonly treat theft, burglary, and the special limits that apply to high-value property. It is not insurance, legal, or financial advice, and it does not describe the policy you actually own. Whether a particular theft is paid, and how much of it is paid, depends on your exact policy form, the endorsements attached to it, your limits, sub-limits, and settlement basis, the facts established by the police report and the insurer’s investigation, and the law of your state, all of which differ substantially between carriers. Every sub-limit, percentage, deductible, discount, scheduling rate, and payout above is an illustrative example chosen to show how the parts of a theft claim fit together, never a quote and never a prediction of what your insurer will pay. Special limits and vacancy rules in particular are revised periodically and vary by form, so treat none of the figures here as your own until you have seen them on your declarations page. Before acting on anything here, read your policy in full and speak with a licensed insurance professional who can review your actual documents.

Edited by Hamza Hai, MBA · Editor

Hamza Hai is the editor of SumSured. She holds an MBA and reviews the site's articles against our editorial standards, checking that every figure is labelled for what it is, that nothing is presented as verified fact without a source the reader can check, and that the writing stays useful to a non-specialist.

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