What is a Scheduled Item Rider on Home Insurance? 

Home insurance can protect all of your property assets, including your possessions. However, your home is full of items, and some of them might be very expensive. The limits of your standard possessions insurance might only go so far in these cases. 

At these times, you might have to take a few extra steps to insure unique or expensive possessions. One of the solutions that most home insurers offer to help you meet these needs is a scheduled item rider. A scheduled item rider is unique insurance coverage that you can add to your policy to explicitly cover a special item in question. It’s there to offer you coverage when your basic possessions coverage cannot. 

Why Do Insurers Exclude Certain Items? 

When you buy homeowners possessions insurance, you will set the policy limit, deductibles and other terms that will determine your eventual payout for a claim. However, even if you choose very flexible policy terms, there are still times when your possessions insurance won’t prove all-encompassing. 

Home insurers can only afford to cover certain losses for their customers, which is why they will often reduce or even exclude coverage for certain types of possessions damage. One of the ways that they do so might be by limiting the coverage available for expensive or unique items, such as: 

• Jewelry and art 
• Computer systems 
• Musical instruments
• Special collections & rare items 

These are often expensive and sensitive items, and any damage to them could prove very costly. That’s why many possessions policies don’t often cover them fully (if at all). However, home insurers frequently offer scheduled item riders that policyholders can buy to expand their protection. 

How Can Scheduled Items Riders Help Possessions Coverage? 

Think of a scheduled personal property insurance as coverage that is designed to offer you the expanded possessions insurance that your possessions coverage can’t. A scheduled item rider will apply to a specific item, such as a piece of jewelry, musical instrument or another special item. It can cover this item for an appropriate value that reflects the item’s true cost.  

Scheduled items riders will also generally cover the item against a much more expansive set of losses than the standard homeowners insurance. For example, most standard policies won’t cover items that you simply lose. However, if you schedule your wedding ring on your policy, then your plan might cover this item if it gets lost or washed down the drain in an accident. 

Therefore, it’s important to ask your insurance agent to help you determine where a scheduled item rider can help you optimize your home insurance. In many cases, you can buy several scheduled item riders for one plan in order to expand coverage to several unique items.