In light of the long list of devastating fires around the world over the past years, we would like to take this opportunity to ensure that our Barker family is correctly covered should a fire occur in your home.

Safety Precautions

In the event of a fire, consider these tips upon evacuating your home to prevent or minimise potential damage to your property:

• Move items that will burn as far away from the house as possible, such as woodpiles, lawn furniture, portable braai's, etc.
• Turn off any gas installations.
• Remove or open curtains, blinds or drapes.
• Move your furniture to the middle of the room and away from windows.
• Close all doors inside the building to prevent drafts which could aggravate the flames.
• Turn outside lights on and leave a light on in every room so the house is visible in heavy smoke.
• Ensure that all photos and important documents are currently downloaded onto a backup hard drive if you’re unable to take your computer with you.
• Place important papers, mementos, and valuables in your car, ready for quick departure.

Your Insurance Cover

• Ensure your cover details are correct.
• Check your policy to make sure that all the details, descriptions and addresses are updated and correct.
• Ensure your insured values are updated and correct.

If the insured values on your Household Contents and House owners (Structure) are too low, this could leave you under-insured, and “Average” may be applied to your pay-out. “Average” is explained below. If you are unsure about the value of your property and contents, get in touch with your Barker Consultant who can either assist you with an Inventory or Property Valuation.

Understanding Under-Insurance and the concept of “Average”

If you are under-insured, “Average” may be applied to your claim pay-out which essentially means you will be responsible for the portion of your “loss” that isn’t sufficiently covered. We’ll use good old Bob and his cover to give you a clearer picture.

Bob owns a home and the rebuild value of the property is R3m. However, Bob only insures the property for R1.5m, as he is of the opinion that this amount is sufficient because the chance of his whole home burning down is pretty slim. Not only is Bob not insuring his home for its full rebuild value, but he’s also forgotten to include easily overlooked costs like rubble removal and architects’ and engineers’ fees which should also be included in the rebuilding cost of his house.

As luck would have it, there is a fire and while Bob doesn’t lose his entire house, the home sustains R1.5mil worth of damage. According to Bob’s understanding, he has insured his property for R1.5 mil and the damage is R1.5mil, so he is perfectly covered for damage. But Bob is mistaken…

An Assessor does a report and calculates the true cost of Bob’s property (R3.0mil) which means Bob is under-insured by 50%, and so “average” is applied to the payout of his claim. Bob has only been paying half the premium that he should have been to be fairly covered. As Bob is under-insured by 50%, he only receives 50% of the value of the claim: this amounts to R750 000 despite his damage being R1.5 mil. Bob is now left out of pocket by R750 000, which means he will be unable to repair all the damage to his home caused by the fire.

We understand times are tough, but it is important to remember to expect the unexpected and ensure that you are prepared and appropriately covered in the event that a fire does occur in your residence so that you are not left in an untenable situation in times like these.

On Monday (31 May 2021), a Barker client saved his house from burning down by having two powder extinguishers available in his home. The claim could have been a whopping R7.35m but thanks to his foresight of investing in fire asphyxiators, it will only be +-R100k. We strongly encourage our Barker clients to purchase a few fire extinguishers for their homes to safeguard them from unnecessary and costly claims. 

Safequip is a credible fire extinguisher supplier. Contact them for SABS-approved units.