School iPad insurance checklist
With schools across the country investing significant amounts of money into mobile learning devices, one of the main things to address is how to insure them. Hopefully the advice below will help.
- Do we need to insure our iPads?
Some schools decide to self-insure, and there is some logic to this. Take an iPad Air 16GB for example. The RRP is £399.00 and a three year insurance policy is £1.78 per month, or £64.00 in total. For every six iPads you buy, you could save the £384 insurance premium and use this money to buy a seventh unit, kept in its box to replace an existing device.
- What about using our existing school policy?
Again, this is an option, but check your small print first. Most of the schools we work with have an excess of £500 or more. With an iPad costing less than that, in effect, they will not be insured. Also, will the children be able to take them home at night?
- Can parents insure the devices under their home policy?
If the parents buy the iPad outright, then yes, they can do this. However, again the issue of insurance excess comes up, and if a claim is made, how much will that affect next year’s premium. Please be careful here, if the school owns the device or they are leased, then the parents are not the legal owners to the tablets.
- What happens if we are leasing the tablets?
Most leasing companies will stipulate that the devices have to be insured and will ask for the name of the insurance company. There is no stipulation on what insurance company to use, you are free to choose.
- Ensure you know who you are dealing with
As most people know, the insurance sector is regulated and policy information is available and carefully written. There are many online iPad insurance companies that cater for the consumer. Whilst these policies may be good, they can be expensive for a school that potentially has a much larger deployment of mobile learning devices. There are companies like edde who specialise in the education sector and multiple devices.
- Check the small print!
One of the reasons why insurance costs vary so much is because the policies are so different. A policy with a £50.00 excess and a maximum two claims per device will typically be cheaper than no excess and no minimum number of claims.
- How easy is it to make a claim?
You never really will know how good the insurance company is and the policy document until you have to make a claim. Whilst edde and the insurance company will do our best to make sure that the claim is dealt with quickly, there are times when this is not always the case. Our policy document and claim form is available via our online portal, so registering a claim should be a quick and simple process.
- What should we look out for in the policy?
- Can the child take the device home?
- Can the device be taken abroad?
- How long have we got to register a claim?
- Is there an excess?
- How many times can we claim per device?
- Exactly what is included – accidental damage, theft
- What is the difference between loss and theft?
Firstly, to point out, our policy does not cover loss. There are insurance companies that will make an additional charge – often £2.00 per month, and add in a £50.00 excess – for loss. (The total additional cost of this insurance can be between 25% and 50% of the cost of the device in the first place!)
But where are the boundaries between loss and theft?
If a child leaves the device under a bed for example, makes a claim, and then finds it again, what do you do? If a pupil leaves an iPad on a bus, then after realising what has happened speaks to the bus company, only to find it has not been handed in, is this loss or theft. Clearly the child has lost the device, but as someone has then taken it, in theory it is theft.
The key thing for us is that has the situation been reported to the Police and do you have a crime reference number? If yes, then the insurance company may well treat it as theft.
- A few bits of advice
Even if you have insured the iPads, always buy a few spare devices. Inevitably, the device may have to go back to the menders to repair a broken screen, and the child in question may be without a device for a week or so.
The major insurance claim category is damage through children dropping the iPad and the screen cracking. Be careful here, many insurance companies (ours included) will stipulate that the device has to be kept in the case. Not only that, the case has to be approved by the insurance company in the first place.
If you have any questions, please give us a call on: 01494 611 465 or send us an email to hello@edde.education