Safety First – Top Tips for your Home Safe

Having a home safe can influence home insurance premiums or be a condition of a home insurance policy.  It’s therefore important that you have a safe which meets your insurers requirements – if you don’t then you may not be covered in the event of a claim.

If you are buying, or already have a home safe, then we recommend you take a look at the following tips from Insafe – a manufacturer and national installer of safes.

• Don’t be tempted to save a few £’s by buying your safe online. The person you are buying from will know your home address and may even have a spare key.
• Have your safe professionally installed. Thieves will simply rip out a poorly secured safe.
• Don’t rely on an old safe. We frequently hear clients say that their Edwardian or Victorian safe is unbreakable. They may be heavy and immovable but modern cordless powertools can cut through them in no time.
• Consider fitting two safes, a main safe and second smaller decoy safe.
• If you’re having building works, speak to safe company at the design stage. It’s much easier to design in a new safe than to retrofit one at the end of works.
• Ensure your safe is fitted in an alarmed room.
• Check your safe is independently rated. Less scrupulous manufacturers give optimistic safe ratings. Look for an AIS, VDS, ECB-S or LPCB plate on the inside. If you’re not sure, speak to us in confidence and we can have it identified for you by one of our safe partners.
• An insurer could decline your claim if a safe is not of the correct rating or poorly installed.
• A cheap safe may not be better than no safe at all. You’re just putting your high value content in a handy box which can be easily stolen.
• Safes come in Grades, from Grade 0 to Grade 6. The higher the grade, the more the safe is rated to hold. Safe Grading And Rating – How It All Works – Insafe International
• There’s not a big difference in cost between safe grades. Consider the next grade up so that you’re future proofed against new valuables purchases

Our experience indicates a recent increase in the number of home safes being stolen, which underlines how important is it to speak to an expert when it comes to home safes and security.  A specialist home insurance broker, like Howden, can talk to you about your property and make security and safety recommendations. This can be for safes, alarms, cameras, and locks, as well as smart home technology. It’s just one of the many benefits of using a broker. For more benefits, read our article: Why you need a broker for your home insurance.