If valuables vanish from your locker, can insurance cover the loss?

This is the second story in Lock & Key, a series examining how India's bank locker system works and what customers should know before trusting their valuables to a steel vault.

Bank lockers are widely seen as the safest place to store valuables such as gold jewellery, heirlooms and important family documents. The belief is simple: once valuables are placed inside a bank locker, they are fully protected.

But what many locker users do not realise is that the valuables inside those bank lockers are usually not insured at all.

Banks provide the locker facility, but they generally do not insure the contents kept inside them.

“Valuables kept in bank lockers are not automatically insured,” said Shilpa Arora, co-founder and COO of Insurance Samadhan. “Banks only provide locker space and are generally not responsible for the contents, except in cases of proven negligence.”

That means if jewellery or valuables go missing, customers often have to rely on separate insurance policies to recover the full value.

This is the second story in Lock & Key, a series examining how India’s bank locker system works and what customers should know before trusting their valuables to a steel vault.