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We contacted four of the largest insurance companies in Sweden, to get answers to some questions. Does it make a difference if the mobile phone has been exposed to a downpour outside the home, compared to if it has been dropped in the bathtub at home? Does it matter if the phone is IP rated? Do you have different types of insurance for this? For example, what should a customer with your basic insurance do?
County insurances:
– The so-called all-risk element in home insurance is an extension of the basic cover that covers sudden and unforeseen events. It is the event that caused the damage that must be sudden and unforeseen for the insurance to apply, says Susanne Fagerberg, customer ombudsman and insurance lawyer at Länsförsäkringar.
– An important factor in the assessment may be whether the incident was so prolonged that one should have reacted and interrupted the course of events to counteract the damage. Furthermore, one must ask oneself what should normally have been foreseen in the event that took place
Susanne Fagerberg assesses that moisture damage that occurred due to handling outside in the rain probably cannot be considered a sudden and unforeseen event, but that, for example, a bathtub leak may be covered depending on the circumstances.
– Support for assessment of this type of damage can be found in rulings from the General Complaints Board. The General Complaints Board has tried one case, for example where the insured held his mobile phone between his neck and shoulder, causing it to fall into the toilet. The board considered that he had taken a conscious risk and that it was therefore not a question of a sudden and unforeseen event, that is to say that it was not an insurance case at all.
People:
– We make the assessment based on whether it is a sudden, unforeseen injury. In this example, we would not make any difference to the whole thing based on the fact that the customer has all-risk insurance, which is included in home insurance between Medium and Large, says Kajsa Moström, press manager at Folksam.
If:
– The damage must be sudden, unforeseen and external. As long as those criteria are met, it doesn’t matter whether it happens in the bath at home or if it’s outside in the rain. The IP rating could matter if it deviates from the supplier’s instructions, then it is a complaint issue, says Osvald Wiklander, press officer at If.
– You need an accident/all-risk part of your home insurance, which is included in Large home insurance and Home insurance Extra with us. However, not in the basic version.
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Trygg Hansa:
– In both cases, it is required that you have taken out the Drulle supplementary insurance (all-risk insurance for moveable property), as events of this kind are not covered by what we can call home insurance’s basic protection. We then investigate whether the condition requirement for Drulle is met – that it is a question of both a sudden and unforeseen event. If the incident itself is compensable, it doesn’t matter if it happened at home or outside, says Håkan Franzén, insurance expert at Trygg Hansa.
He elaborates:
– By sudden event is meant that it must occur fairly instantaneously, that is to say it should not be an injury with a long sequence of events. But unforeseen means that you should not understand what will happen if you perform a certain action. If, for example, you walk with your phone in your hand and it’s raining, it can therefore be difficult to get compensation
According to Håkan Franzén, the phone’s IP classification can factor into the insurance company’s decision.
– IP class can play a role to the extent that a phone that is not IP rated is significantly more sensitive to moisture and you thus know that it cannot withstand the exposure that an IP rated model does. For example, knowingly swimming with a phone in your pocket that is not IP-rated and it is then damaged by moisture is probably not a compensable event.
– If Drulle is missing, the phone must have been damaged in such a way that it is covered by what we call Property Protection. Examples of this are fire, burglary, storm, leakage (from water mains) and flood. The fact that I cannot give a more precise answer regarding Drulleskadar is because we always make an individual assessment in these cases. We try to provide compensation as far as possible.