Can you claim on contents insurance without a receipt?

If your home’s contents are damaged, destroyed, or lost in an insured event (e.g. a fire, flood, or burglary), you can make a claim on your contents insurance policy to get them repaired or replaced, often with new-for-old products. But you may first need to show the insurer evidence that you owned the items before they will accept your claim.

Insurers require customers to provide evidence of contents ownership to help prevent fraud, where people make false claims for items that don’t exist to get money out of the insurer.

Receipts can be especially useful to insurers as they not only prove ownership of an item, but also indicate the item’s value. Knowing how much you originally paid for an item can serve as a useful starting point for assessing the kind of insurance payout you may receive, or the type of new-for-old replacement product that would be required.

While different insurers will have different requirements, some of the evidence that insurers may accept as proof of ownership for contents insurance may include:

• Receipts and proof of purchase
• Credit card and bank statements
• Photos or videos
• Original packaging
• Manuals and warranty cards
• Spare parts
• Declarations from family and friends

If you don’t have your original receipt, in some cases you may be able to contact the seller to track down a duplicate receipt. That said, not all retailers will have these records available.

If you’ve specifically added individual high-value contents to your policy, such as jewellery, electronics or musical instruments, the insurer will already be aware that you own the item, so you may not need to provide quite as much evidence. However, you’ll still need to provide something to get your claim accepted.

Many insurers require some proof of ownership before an item can be noted separately in your home insurance. This could include a description of the item from the shop that sold it to you, or a formal written assessment from a professional valuer.

If you’re unable to provide proof of ownership to an insurer, it’s possible that they may deny your claim. However, insurers assessors will often use their best judgement when processing contents insurance claims.

For example, even if you can’t provide proof of ownership for your stolen TV, the assessor may reasonably assume that you would own one, especially if they can see you still own a TV cabinet surrounded by dangling disconnected cords. In such a case, the insurer may offer to replace it with a baseline model, rather than a top-of-the-range TV with all the latest features.