When was the last time you thought about your home insurance? If you gave it any thought at all, like many households, you might just have given the nod to the same again when the renewal notice came through or even accepted an auto-renewal arrangement suggested by your current insurer.
There are some very good reasons why it is worth paying rather closer attention to the next renewal. Instead of accepting it automatically, use it as an opportunity to see whether it continues to offer precisely what you need in terms of both cover options and the price.
Your loyalty, your penalty
Towards the end of last year, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) concluded that there is widespread evidence of home insurance customers being made to pay a “loyalty penalty”, reported the Guardian newspaper on the 4th of October.
Customers returning to the same insurer to renew their cover year after year are consistently charged higher premiums by some insurers for the same policies than new customers.
According to those reports, as many as six million home and motor insurance policyholders are being overcharged an average of £200 upon each renewal – a combined total in excess charges of some £1.2 billion.
Review your home insurance cover
Of course, you want to avoid being charged simply because you are a loyal returning customer. But there are additional reasons for carefully reviewing your home insurance policy before blindly renewing the same policy you had last year.
Chief of these is to assure yourself that the policy continues to provide the protection that your home requires. Extensions or alterations to the property or local developments affecting house prices in the area might need a revision of the total building sum insured, or you may need to revise your home contents insurance to include recently-purchased items.
You might discover that your current home building and contents insurance policy has simply been overtaken by refinements and embellishments better served by a completely different insurer.
Consult the experts
Who do you turn to when you want a thorough review of your home insurance cover?
The internet, of course, makes comparing different insurers and their competing policies so much easier. Comparison websites take the process a step further and quickly make many of those comparisons on your behalf. But an article in the Consumers’ Association’s Which? magazine on the 30th of December highlighted some of the reasons why you might want to approach the results produced by any comparison website with caution:
- because there is a natural limit to the number of questions that can be asked in any online comparison tool, Which? found that this left insurers making several assumptions behind the answers that had been given;
- in some instances, those assumptions led to the price of the premiums being inflated;
- on the other hand, the answers to other questions might as easily lead to premiums being artificially lowered – and, if based on erroneous information – might leave you dangerously underinsured or even invalidate your policy.
For expert and impartial advice on the making the most of your next home insurance quote, you might do better by drawing on our specialist guidance here at UKinsuranceNET.
By drawing on our expertise and experience, you may benefit from a home insurance quote that is specially tailored to your particular needs and circumstances. We know the questions that need to be answered – and we can take everything you tell us carefully into account when matching your precise needs and requirements to the home insurance policies available.
That is a tried and tested process which has resulted in 75% of our customers who received an online insurance quote being able to get a cheaper quote simply by giving us a call on 01325 346328. So, why not get in touch today?
