The Art Newspaper has a suprising report about art insurance. According to Christina Ruiz who quotes Richard Northcott from the private client division of Heath Lambert, insurance companies are finally tracking their policies and discovering their overall exposure to events like art fairs. Why insurance companies have suddenly become aware of their risk exposure isn’t explained:

re-insurance companies—firms that protect specialist fine art insurers—are becoming increasingly wary of insuring too much art in any one place at the same time.

“For a long time nobody in the insurance world was monitoring the cumulative value of art shown at fairs or kept in storage,” explains Northcott. “But in the last two or three years the industry has become a lot more sophisticated and a lot more aware of the issue.” […]

The cap on insurance liability for art kept in one place, known in the industry as “maximum aggregated value”, has also led to rising insurance prices at specialist art warehouses.

Art Gets Harder to Insure (The Art Newspaper)