If you have a mortgage you must have buildings insurance but do not accept the offer from your mortgage company, you WILL find it cheaper elsewhere.
The average cost of home insurance is £3 a week and yet still almost a quarter of households do not have contents insurance.
Your contents are almost always likely to be more value than you think, often even double, so check your levels of cover each year.
Get a quote
It will only take you
30 minutes to go through all of these comparison sites and it is worth the effort. To get cheaper home insurance you should take 4 steps.
Find the cheapest quote using a comparison site. It takes about 10 minutes
Play around with the variables
Go direct to see if they can beat the quote or offer any cashback deals
Make your decision and transact!
Play with the variables
Play around with some of the variables to try and decrease your quote even further. This could take you another 10 minutes but the extra time is worth it. We have done it and found that the savings can be
HUGE!
No claims bonus -- The longer you have gone without making
a claim, the lower your premium. In a lot of cases, no claims of 5 years or above could lower your premium by 60 to 70%! You will found your current no claims bonus on your insurance certificate. The
NCD usually builds up in the name of the policyholder, so it's a good idea to take out home insurance in joint names
Excess --
Raising your excess by a couple of hundred pounds can cut your premium by up to 20%. However, you will have to pay this amount at short notice if an accident happens so please make sure you can really afford it
Security -- don't forget to mention any alarm you have, this lowered our premium on average by about 7%, the same goes for being part of a
Neighbourhood Watch scheme which can lower premiums by 5%
Your job title -- Do not lie but play with different job titles to see if it makes a
difference. If you are a housewife / househusband, make sure you put this as your job title rather than unemployed as it lowers your premium
Students -- You might think it is cheaper to have your student insurance added to your parents policy but often it is cheaper to have your own policy
Need to know
Decide what is important to you. Adding on certain extras may cost more but could be worth doing.
Accidental Damage may add £20 to £30 on to your policy but means that you have greater cover.
Having greater
Personal Possessions cover means that items like cameras, laptops and phones are covered when outside of the home. You also next to make sure that you have the right level of single item cover
Don't forget to check some of the more quirky extras. For example, would the hundreds of pounds worth of downloaded music be covered?
If I had a power cut, would the contents of my freezer be replaced?
Remember, if your home is empty for
30 days then it could invalidate any claim
The inside track
If you are buying a new home, you need to make sure that you have arranged buildings insurance from the day you exchange contracts
Some policies automatically increase your contents cover at
Christmas or around a wedding to take into consideration the extra food and presents you may have in the house
Pay your premiums annually. It can be convenient to spread your payments over monthly installments, but it is almost always more expensive because firms charge an additional admin fee.
Try to make a one-off payment each year and it could save 10%!
Don't forget that there might be specialist insurers out there who offer you greater protection for your unique needs such as for thatched or listed properties or those at a greater risk of flood
- published: 19 Jul 2012
- views: 134