The Week After a Burglary: What Insurers Ask, and When

A burglary does not feel like a paperwork problem in the first hour. It feels like a violation. Someone was in your home, in your bedroom, going through your things, and the items they took are often the ones that mattered most: the laptop with your photos on it, the jewellery from your grandmother, the watch you were given when you retired.

Then the practical clock starts. A burglary claim runs on a timeline, and the questions arrive in a fairly predictable order. Each one quietly assumes you can produce something on request. The trouble is that the things most likely to be stolen, the small, valuable, portable items, are exactly the things people are least able to prove they owned.

This post walks through that timeline, what is asked at each stage, and what it assumes you have. It pairs with proving what you owned after a fire, flood, or burglary.

Key takeaways

• A burglary claim unfolds in stages, and each stage asks for something specific.
• The first ask is usually a police report or crime reference number, often within a time limit that varies by insurer and policy.
• The core of the claim is an itemised list of what was taken, with a value and proof for each item.
• The items most likely to be stolen are the hardest to prove, which is why pre-loss records matter most.

Day one: report to the police, then the insurer

Almost every policy expects you to report a burglary to the police first and to obtain a crime reference number, then to notify your insurer promptly. There is often a deadline measured in days, and it varies by insurer and policy, so the safe move is to do both as soon as you can.

At this stage no one is asking for proof yet. You are establishing that the event happened. But this is also the moment to ask your insurer the most useful question you can ask: exactly what evidence will they need, and in what form. Asking early, while the detail is fresh, is far better than guessing later.

The first few days: the itemised list

Next comes the heart of the claim, an itemised list of what was stolen. Not a lump sum, but item by item: what it was, roughly when and where you bought it, and what it was worth. This is where a burglary claim starts to resemble the 2am list after a fire, except that your home is still standing, which helps in one specific way.

Because the house is intact, you can see the gaps. The empty spot on the shelf, the drawer that was emptied, the wall where the bike was. That jogs the memory in a way a total loss never can. Even so, people consistently undercount, especially when a whole jewellery box or a bag of small electronics is gone in one sweep. See why we underestimate what we own.

The following week: proof of ownership and value

Once the list exists, the questions turn to evidence. For each significant item the insurer wants to know how they can be confident you owned it and that it was worth what you say. This is where the burden of proof sits squarely on you, and where many claims start to thin out.

Useful proof includes dated photos or video of the item in your home, receipts, bank and card statements, manufacturer or warranty records, and, above all for electronics, serial numbers. A serial number is hard to fabricate and easy to verify, which is why it carries real weight. See serial numbers and receipts in insurance claims and how to prove what you owned.

For jewellery, watches, and other specialist items, an insurer may ask for a professional valuation, and without one the value you can claim may be capped. These are precisely the items burglars target, and precisely the ones people rarely document in advance.

Through to settlement: gaps become deductions

As the assessor works through the list, items with strong evidence move smoothly. Items with weak or no evidence get queried, reduced, or set aside. The settlement is the sum of what you could remember and could prove, and every gap on either side is money that stays unpaid.

This is not insurers being difficult. A claim has to be evidenced, and the policyholder is the only person who could ever have created that evidence in advance. For how the valuation side works, see how insurers value a contents claim. For the wider pattern of cover that looked fine until tested, see we thought we were covered.

How WHIG gets you ready before the timeline starts

Every stage of a burglary claim assumes you can produce something: a value, a description, a proof. WHIG creates all of that in advance. You record one video walkthrough of your home, and WHIG builds a structured, dated, valued record where each item is matched to a frame from your own footage, with high-value items flagged for a serial number, receipt, or valuation.

When the timeline starts, you are not reconstructing your jewellery box from memory or hunting for a receipt that may not exist. You already have a dated record, stored off-site, of what was there. WHIG does not guarantee any claim outcome, and WHIG does not recommend a sum insured. The values are estimates, not professional valuations. It simply means that on the worst week, the proof is already done. See how WHIG works.