Home Insurance in South Africa 2024 - All You Need To Know

What is Home Contents Insurance

Home Contents Insurance covers your household possessions if they are stolen or damaged. You can file a claim with your insurance provider and get a payout for the stipulated value amount of your possessions if something happens to them. Whether you buy or rent, you should insure your home and its contents. 

Picture this: there’s nothing like the feeling of getting home from work after a long day, putting your feet up, and watching your favourite TV show, is there? Except, eish, your TV cabinet is bare, and there’s just a couch-shaped patch of dust where you used to sit.

When you have Budget Home Contents Insurance, it suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. You just give us a call, and we’ll replace your stolen home contents in a jiffy. We offer two types of affordable Home Contents Insurance quotes - Comprehensive Home Contents Insurance and Fire and Storm Only. Read about them below and get the one that suits your needs and budget in minutes.

Comprehensive Home Contents Insurance

 
There’s a whole lot that we cover under our Comprehensive Home Insurance: 

1. Theft of your guests’ and your domestic employees’ possessions.
   We also cover stolen garden furniture and washing. 
2. Loss and damage to the valuables in your home caused by break-ins, theft, malicious damage, overflowing geysers, and a range of natural occurrences like fires, lightning, storms, and power surges.
3. If load-shedding strikes and the food in your fridge and freezer deteriorates, we will cover it.
4. Rent to live elsewhere if you can’t stay in your home because of damage caused by a covered event. 
5. Homeowner’s or tenant’s liability, depending on whether you own or rent your home.
6. Vet bills for your pets if they’re injured in a road accident.

Fire and Storm Only Home Contents Insurance

The name says Fire and Storm Only Home Insurance, but this type of Home Contents Insurance covers much more. You’ll have coverage for damage to your home contents caused by most natural disasters, including fires, storms, explosions, falling trees (except if they’re being felled), earthquakes, floods, and damage caused by burst or overflowing geysers, equipment, and pipes.

Home Contents Insurance quote

Calculating your Home Contents Insurance rates can be difficult. If you've never had home insurance before, you may not know how much you should pay or how many policies you'll need. 

No matter what your budget is, you can get an affordable Home Contents Insurance quote online in minutes – one that suits your pocket and covers all of your home insurance contents. Switch to Budget today so we can replace those beloved household items without a fuss if something happens to them. Use our home insurance quotes calculator. We make it affordable to insure a home ‘cos you can’t afford not to.

What does Home Contents Insurance cover?

• Home Contents Insurance includes:
  Cover for loss or damage to household goods and personal possessions.
• Cover for loss or damage caused by fire, lightning, power surge, explosion, malicious damage, storms, bursting or overflowing of geysers, equipment or pipes, break-in and theft.
• Cover for food that deteriorates because of a power failure or if your freezer breaks down.
• Cover for stolen washing and/or garden furniture.
• Cover in the event of your and/or your spouse’s death if caused by fire or break-in at your home.
• Cover for your domestic employees' or guests’ belongings (only if there is proof of damage caused by a break-in).
• Liability as a householder
• Tenants liability as a householder
• Liability to domestic employees if he/she is injured or dies at your home while working
• The option to increase your Householders Liability Cover to R5 million, R10 million, or R20 million
• Budget’s Home Contents Insurance automatically includes Assist Benefits.

Assist Benefits 
No matter which affordable Home Contents Insurance quote you choose, you get all of our helpful Assist Benefits. 

Road Assist: If you’ve locked your keys in your car, run out of petrol, or burst a tyre, we’ll send someone to help you get back on the road in no time as part of your Home Contents Insurance policy.

Home Assist: Home emergencies shouldn’t cost a fortune. Via Home Assist, we’ll pay for the call-out fee plus one hour’s labour if you have an emergency that requires an electrician, locksmith, glazier, or plumber.

Trauma Assist: We have a 24-hour phone line where you can get counselling and referrals following a traumatic event that happened to you or a loved one.

Legal Assist: Our team of professionals will give you expert telephonic advice on legal and tax matters, all at no cost when you take out Budget Home Contents Insurance.

Entertainment Assist: Ever wish you had a personal assistant to make those annoying dental appointments and restaurant bookings? It’s a reality when you’ve got our Entertainment Assist Benefit with your Home Contents Insurance. We’ll make all those pesky little arrangements for you.

Get Cash Back with Budget

Embrace the incredible feeling of being covered, and guess what? It gets even better with our Cash Back Bonus! Top up your Budget Home Contents Insurance policy with our optional Cash Back Bonus add-on, stay two years claim-free, and voila, we'll treat you to some cash back. As you can see, it pays to insure your home. Get a Home Contents Insurance quote from us today.

Have you ever tried to leave the house without taking a bag or satchel of some kind with you? You'll find that it's next to impossible. Even the most well-organised person won't get far without their car keys and wallet with them — not to mention other essentials like your cellphone, vape, water bottle and charger. If you're a parent you can add random toys and snacks to this list and if you travel for work, you probably have items that aren't easily replaced (like your ID and passport) with you.

While home insurance covers your belongings while you're at home and car insurance can cover the contents in your car in transit, they don't protect you in between these two places — in other words, while you're out and about in public. 

Keep reading to find out why portable possessions insurance from Budget Insurance is a must for every busy South African.

What are portable possessions?

Portable possessions include anything you can take with you when you are outside your home or office. They can be divided into two categories — the type that may not have a high financial value but you keep on you out of necessity; and specific high-value items like an electronic vape pen or jewellery. You can cover the contents of your bag collectively to account for the former and insure individual items separately for the latter. 

You might think that this type of coverage is unnecessary, but it's a sad reality that in South Africa there are few places you can go where you are truly free from the threat of crime. 

Take, for example, your average shopping trip. You'll know the feeling all too well — it's month-end and you've just been paid. You visit the mall to collect a new bank card, find that perfect present for mom and stock up on groceries. Unfortunately, it will seem as if every other South African has the same idea, and it will be busy. It's here that you're likely to experience a crime — and often without you knowing it until it's too late. 

Increasingly, criminals are making busy public areas their playgrounds, taking advantage of the confined space, noisiness and high volumes of foot traffic to relieve unsuspecting people of their belongings. Often, by the time you've realised that the person 'randomly' bumping into you earlier now has your cellphone and wallet, they're long gone. 

While cancelling and reordering a debit card and RICAing a new SIM for a new phone will be tedious, having its cost covered will go a long way towards making the situation bearable.

What isn't covered by portable possessions insurance?

When considering portable possessions cover, it's worth noting that like all forms of insurance, it acts as a form of protection and not a substitute for common sense. Depending on your policy, your insurers will cover the cost of replacing most items, but not if the loss or damage is a result of negligence — for example, leaving your phone on your car seat while driving or walking away from your unattended purse to go to the bathroom. If you leave an item in clear view in your vehicle, instead of hidden away, and it’s stolen, you won’t be covered.

You also may need to insure items purchased for business or work use separately. Remember also that insurance won't pay for the natural wear and tear of any items over time.

Blake's entire world is her cellphone — and she spends hours glued to her screen, watching videos, chatting with friends and browsing social media. It means that her smart device is used more heavily than most, and has the odd scratch or worn button. Blake takes out portable possessions insurance, specifying the make and model of her phone in her cellphone insurance. When she has her handbag stolen, her handbag insurance coverage means she can replace her phone with an identical or a similar one, using its listed value as guidance.

Blake only has to wait a few days before a phone is back in her hands as if it hadn't been stolen in the first place. She understands that if she had over-inflated the phone's value, it could have rendered her entire policy void. She also knows that her phone won't be replaced with the latest make and model. Because she insured her bag's unspecified portable possessions collectively, she was able to replace all the other items she kept in her bag that were not financially valuable but made her life easier. This included a bag organiser, taser, cigarettes and more.

What is covered by portable possessions insurance?

To ensure you get adequate and fair personal possessions insurance coverage, insurers offer dedicated products covering high-value items like cameras, watches and jewellery. Here are a few items you could insure as stand-alone items: 

• Cameras, which can cover audiovisual equipment such as digital cameras or recorders as well as camera gear like tripods and lenses

• Jewellery items such as genuine precious metal or gemstone bracelets, rings, cufflinks and watches

• Communication devices such as laptops, tablets, iPads and smart watches

• Cellphones, including high-value accessories such as earbuds 

• Beauty and body products such as perfumes and makeup

When it comes to portable possessions cover, Budget Insurance can customise your coverage to keep you covered no matter where you go or what you take with you. You can cover particularly high-value items separately or collectively insure your handbag and its contents to a certain value if the individual contents aren't expensive but add up to a lot. 

Provided you are honest about what items you own and their value (and update this list as and when it changes) our expert brokers will be able to assist you — whether you need everyday portable possessions cover or coverage for a holiday or trip. 

Get portable possessions insurance from Budget Insurance today!

You rely on your portable possessions heavily and use them more often than you probably use items in your home or office. They deserve dedicated insurance coverage and you deserve the peace of mind that comes from it. Our expert brokers can also answer any questions you have and advise you on the best cellphone insurance for your needs or whether or not you need to increase your laptop insurance coverage. To find out what you can insure this way and what it might cost, contact Budget Insurance for a quote today.