Having received our renewal of contract for the house insurance today and thinking about the devastation caused by wild fires, of late, we are wondering whether our guarantees are sufficient. We don’t really know how the guarantee figures are produced. We may need to seek advice from the “conseiller” at our bank to discuss this. It would be helpful if any knwoledgeable SF folk could give us some informantion to take with us. Many thanks.
You could always ask @fabien , but he might want to sell you a policy 
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Hi Janet, Mark is right we can advise but we won’t necessarily try to sell you something. We are brokers so our job is literally to shop around various insurers and companies and find the right one for you. In a way we are insurance company agnostic so if you like (or don’t like) some we don’t mind looking elsewhere. Unlike a bank or an insurer we want you to be happy even if that means changing your policies or companies regularly
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Thank you
Thank you Fabien for the information. We are not thinking of changing our insurance with the bank at the moment as it has always been very good, especially after the big storm of 1999. We just wanted to know how the property value is decided in case of a claim.. Plus finding out if we are adequately covered. How does it work?
Assessing level of coverage is to be seen with your current advisor as they have the terms & conditions and a copy of your policy. Make sure you keep a written copy or trace of any correspondence in case they misadvised you so that you have a recourse if things go sideways.
In regard to the value of the building it’s always up to the reconstruction value but as per the assessor’s assessment. It has to be an independent assessor and you can challenge their expertise if you’re not happy with the result but that’s usually pretty accurate and often there is back and forth with the owners to adjust the assessment as close as possible. The main issue lies with the discount being applied on the policy afterwards and that is the point that should be seen with your advisor (new for old and that kind of clauses). Make sure you understand what happens when you no longer have a copy of the invoices or the discount they apply based on different type of content (furniture discounts much harder than valuables for example).
hope that helps?
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Thank you, very good. Will see the bank conseiller and try to ask some questions and get some understandable answers.
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Worst case scenario you can some answers or concerns through me and I’ll do my best to “translate” in plain English 
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very kind thank you again