If you’re going to Uni you’ll be getting carried away with the excitement and sense of opportunity that comes with living away from home. Without dampening your spirit of adventure, take a moment and have a guess at the cumulative monetary worth of your modern consumer goods (laptop, phone etc.), you may start feeling a shade exposed.
This is clarified in a recent survey carried out by Endsleigh in conjunction with the NUS. It found that the average student takes more than £2,000 worth of equipment with them to university, a devastating sum in the event of insufficient insurance.
The brunt of this figure will often come in the form of: laptops, tablets, netbooks, MP3 players/iPods and smart phones. All of these items are relatively small goods, which don’t easily reveal their cumulative worth.
Let’s now look at some enlightening trends: 1 in 4 students own an iPad – an increase of 147% on last year, and on average a student has £715 worth of digital music. You begin to see how insurance in this modern age takes on a different slant from the generic Buildings and Contents packages of yesteryear.
Insurers need to meld their policies in line with the changing worlds of consumerism and lifestyle, but this isn’t always the case. Students who may think they’re covered by their parents policy, could well be in for a nasty shock, with many parental policies being insufficient.
Students need to be covered against damage outside of the home, accidental damage, malicious damage, and all sorts of other variables as well. Therefore, a specialised policy such as a ‘gadget insurance policy’ is often the best measure – effectively ring-fencing the students most precious goods.
Blindly relying on a parental policy could lead to high excess charges, huge hikes on policy premiums, losing your no claims bonus (on average 25%), or even finding you’re not covered at all.
If you accidentally damage your goods yourself via complacency or maybe on a night out – we all know people who’ve lost or dropped a phone – you may be a victim of ‘walk in theft’ or even malicious damage.
Both students and parents of students need to be keenly aware of the dangers that this veritable treasure trove carries with it. The fact that 1 in 3 students is a victim of crime may serve as a wake-up call (Government stats).
Taking out a policy tailored for students seems the best remedy, considering that students are an astonishing 60% more likely to make a claim.