Insurance schedule appraisal frequency refers to the cadence on which a scheduled-jewellery insurance appraisal should be reviewed and updated to keep coverage and premium aligned with current replacement cost. Most major insurers carrying jewellery cover, including Jewelers Mutual, Chubb and AIG in North America, recommend or contractually require an updated appraisal every three to five years for high-value pieces. Some carriers tie this to a sliding scale where higher-value items face shorter cycles, while other insurers leave the responsibility with the policyholder.

Why frequency matters

Replacement-cost appraisals are tied to current retail prices for diamonds, coloured stones, precious metals and labour. None of these inputs are stable. Diamond pricing has moved both up and down through the past decade, with sharp declines in laboratory-grown wholesale prices spilling into the natural-stone segment. Gold has roughly doubled in CAD terms since 2018. Coloured-stone categories, particularly fine ruby, Kashmir sapphire, Paraiba tourmaline and natural Padparadscha, have appreciated meaningfully. Goldsmith and bench labour costs have risen with broader wage inflation. An appraisal written ten years ago is unlikely to support a current claim accurately, and the gap can leave a customer underinsured at the moment of loss.

Pieces also change. Settings wear, prongs are replaced, stones are repolished after damage, and the physical specification of the insured item drifts away from the original document. Updated appraisals catch these changes and keep the description of record matched to what the customer is actually wearing.

Triggering events

Beyond scheduled cycles, several events should trigger an unscheduled appraisal review:

• Significant repair, restoration or stone replacement, after which the appraisal description and value should be re-issued to reflect what is in the piece now.
• Material market movement in either direction; a forty per cent change in metal price or a major diamond-pricing reset is a reason to re-paper the schedule.
• A change of insurer or transition from homeowner schedule to specialist policy, where the new carrier may have different documentation requirements.
• A change in residence to a different country or region, where replacement-cost markets and supply chains differ.

Practical guidance

For most clients a five-year cycle for ordinary scheduled items and a three-year cycle for items above the carrier's high-value threshold (often around 50,000 USD or CAD per item) is a defensible default. The customer should keep the original and successive appraisals on file with their insurance documentation, retain photographs and any laboratory reports together with the appraisal, and review the schedule with their broker or carrier whenever a major life event such as a move, marriage, inheritance or divorce affects the asset register.

The dealer or appraiser providing the updated document should retain the prior appraisal in their records, work from the same physical specification where the piece is unchanged, and clearly identify any change in the piece on the new document. Dating, signature, qualification and a stated methodology remain essential on every refresh. The value should reflect current replacement-cost-new at retail, not the indexed-to-inflation projection of the old number.