Misc Claims > Burglary Policy

Scope of Cover

• The Standard Burglary and house breaking insurance policy covers theft of property after actual forcible and violent entry into the premises or theft followed by actual forcible and violent exit. It also covers risk of hold up.

Some important aspects.

• In the FIR proper section relating to forcible entry should be incorporated. In many cases, the Police Authorities deliberately not register the FIR on 457 IPC or not mention above the forcible entry in the FIR to minimize the crime ratio.
• Loss or damage where any member of the insurer or his staff is concerned is not payable under the policy.
• Proper books and accounts should be maintained.

Case Study - I

One of India’s famous finance company based on South India having branches all over India. They are giving loan against pledge of gold to the customers and they taken insurance coverage for such pledged jewellery from underwriters, which having some agreement such as loss to be paid on market value basis i.e.:

The price of gold would be arrived at on the basis of the market price prevailing at the centre or nearest active centre on the date of the loss.

In addition to the cost of gold as computed above the insurer agrees to compensate for ornament making charges at the flat rate of 15% of the cost of gold & gold ornaments pledged which should be included in the sum insured (market value +15%)

At that time they are doing the following documents:

As per manual and discussion with the insured, whenever a Pawner (A person who want to take loan pledging his Gold) comes to office of the insured his gold ornament is tested by the authorised officials of the insured to assess the value. The valuation of the ornament is based exclusively on the weight and fineness of the gold contents. A slip in form GL-1a is filled by entering the name of Pawner, detail about item, and its gross, net weight and pledge value. If the Pawner agrees for the loan another form PN-1 is filled which is signed by the Pawner and the Branch Head, then the gold items along with form PN-1 is send to another official who enters all the details in another form GL-1 (Gold Appraisal Report). ID proof from the Pawner is obtained and details are filled in another form GL-2 (Gold Appraisal Report-Gold packing) giving a unique pledge number for every gold item pledged. The same pledge number is entered on PN-1 form.

The gold items are packed in presence of Pawner in a poly-pack and the same is sealed with paper, after signing on the paper by the Pawner. The gold items such pledged are kept in the Double lock safe vault.

The inventory of each branch were maintained at the branch as well as head office on daily basis.

There was two separate incidents surveyed by us (for different branches), both the branches are located in the first floor of the isolated shopping complex. Both the cases the armed culprits entered into the branch in working time and captured all the employees and guards and looted the entire gold kept in the safe with the keys forcibly taken from the employees on gun point. After the looting entire jewellery, they locked the employees inside the room and run away.

Since the documents relating to the gold, such as its net weight, name of owner and inventory list and other above documents are available, there is no difficulty to assess such loss.

Case Study –II

There is a Hardware retailer shop having various godowns nearby. Most of the purchases are not properly billed and it is not possible to maintain any stock register, since the items dealing them are very large in number. In such cases, it is very difficult to assess the loss, i.e. for conducting the physical inventory of left over stock will take number of days and in the purchase bills are not proper, the valuation of left over stock is also very difficult because the name written in the bill are differ from the items physically available there.

Case Study-III

In the winter season, there is various burglary claims in the godowns of pulses (Dal, etc) specially like Alipur areas, where have lot of such godowns. Most of the claims are similar, where a group of miscreants with arms entered the premises and captured the security guard at night time and looted the stocks in trucks.

Case Study - IV

Now a days, it was observed that it is quite common the burglary from the garment manufacturing factories located at Gurgaon area. It seems that most of the cases the security guard involved in such cases, since after such incident the security guards are absconding. Even some cases, the insured had night vision CCTV Camera, there the culprits put stickers on the camera and even they stolen the DDR attached with the computer i.e. the culprits even aware the position of the camera’s and having the knowledge where the DDR was kept.