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Most insurance policies for valuable papers specifically state the exclusion of documents stored electronically. Even though many businesses keep a wealth of important records in electronic form, few property policies provide coverage for damage to electronic data.

Valuable papers insurance is a special type of property-casualty insurance. Valuable papers insurance will reimburse the policyholder for the monetary value of any valuable papers such as wills, trusts or corporate charters, that are lost for any reason. It is often purchased by corporations, small businesses and wealthy people.

Valuable papers insurance protects businesses from the expensive and often time-consuming process of replacing important documents. The coverage limits for valuable papers insurance can be very high in some cases, however, the coverage is always limited to either the actual monetary value of the papers themselves or their replacement value. Furthermore, the papers insured must always be carefully guarded in an appropriate fashion in order to file a claim.

If a business’s commercial property policy does not include valuable papers, those items can be insured by an endorsement, which generally provides the same, or in some cases broader, coverage than is included in a typical property-casualty insurance policy.
Many businesses store critical documents on their premises. Examples are building leases, insurance policies, business licenses, patient medical records, and building permits. The insurance term for such documents is valuable papers and records.

Under many commercial property policies, the cost to replace or restore information on valuable papers and records are listed under Property Not Covered. Nevertheless, these costs may be covered, at least to some degree, under a section entitled Coverage Extensions.

Valuable papers coverage applies to the cost to replace or restore lost information on records, whether or not duplicates exist. For example, suppose that you want to expand a warehouse you own. You hire an architect to produce drawings of three possible configurations for your building. The drawings have been in your possession for only a week when they are destroyed by a tornado. Neither you nor the architect has any copies. To replace the drawings, you must pay the architect to recreate them.

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