Insurance Inventory List
Following some discussions with one of the 2nd tier banks in Australia, I was advised that they offered their members a software tool called Virtual Safe which enables the user to store a list as well as photo’s of all of their valuables for insurance purposes should they get stolen or the house be damaged by fire or water etc.
Keeping a list, whether it is in soft form or simply on paper is a great idea, because what are the chances you will remember every piece of jewellery you own and how much its costs or is valued for. What about all of your other valuables, equipment and even important documents eg Property Titles.
What occurred to me though, is what good is a list if it is stuck within your house if the house burnt down or on your PC if your laptop was stolen.
Not much good at all.
There are several services available in both Australia and New Zealand that can assist businesses and the every day public to create a register of their valuables. In some cases, they come out and do it for you, sometimes software is involved and for a little extra, they can also store a copy of the list for you. After some further digging, I found plenty of free software that does this thing and several online services as well. One online service enabled you to create an almost anonymous account that you could then use to store details and photo’s of your belongings. Not sure if I would trust it though. The idea was right. Maybe if it was offered by the insurance company I would be a little less suspicious.
As mentioned earlier, keeping the list in the house or on the PC is one thing, being smart enough to keep the list outside of the home is another. Cost effective services such as Carbonite enable you to not only backup your key documents online, they can also assist you to backup any software you are using to create your insurance investory list or register. This is as simple as backing up the database which would include all descriptions and photos. Best of all, with the encryption methods Carbonite implements to secure your precious data, you would know there would not be any funny businesses going on.
