Appraisal service

Chubb pioneered the use of expert appraisers. Our objective is to determine the accurate cost to repair or rebuild your home should it be severely damaged, and therefore assess the amount of cover you need. We also suggest ways to reduce damage or loss to your home and contents, and can organise a valuation by a specialist of your home's fine art and jewellery.

When you purchase a Chubb Masterpiece policy we will arrange a personal home appraisal free of charge. Chubb's appraisers have a variety of backgrounds, including architecture, surveying and fine art. Each has been trained to assess the architectural features of unique homes. The appraiser will examine your home inside and out (including outbuildings). They estimate the replacement value of all features and take into account rarity of materials, design and the need for skilled craftsmanship. Afterwards you will receive an appraisal report that may include photographs of key features.

Many insurers take the wrong approach to valuing property. They expect the homeowner to guess the replacement value. Many homeowners incorrectly take the market value as the rebuild value.

They will penalise you if you get the value wrong by reducing the settlement by a proportion of the loss (the "average clause"). And if you own a listed building or other parties can legally enforce you to fully restore your property - whatever the financial cost to you.

Once your home is appraised, we can offer you a payment basis of "extended replacement cost". We have great confidence in our home appraisal service - so we will cover your home to the full rebuild cost even if we get the replacement valuation wrong. It means that we will pay the full amount to replace your home, whatever the cost (except for a few unusual buildings), so you can restore your home's features with like-for-like quality.

"We live in a grade II listed 17th Century timberframe farm house. The Chubb appraiser determined the rebuild cost to be £700,000 - it meant that we had been under-insured by £200,000! With a listed building, we would have had to cover the difference in building something similar. We sleep easier knowing that we have the right cover and even if Chubb turned out to be wrong and we should have insured for more, they will pay the difference."

"We recently brought a three-storey Georgian style house in a popular Dublin suburb. We had insured all our previous homes based on their purchase price. After meeting with the Chubb appraiser and receiving the useful report we learned that all these years we had been overpaying premiums. We're grateful to Chubb for getting it right".