In our last post, we covered 10 common questions about home insurance cover that customers may not know. In this blog, we’re looking at common questions that you might have while going through a quote for home insurance.
If you’re currently buying or have recently bought your home, you can look at the report from your surveyor or your mortgage application which should include this amount. If not, and your home is of standard construction, you can use the ABI’s rebuild calculator (http://abi.bcis.co.uk). Make sure you regularly check that the amount you have insured is high enough to cover this as it will change over time.
You are able to buy these separate or combined, with different insurers or the same provider. The main reason people choose combined is because it is typically cheaper than getting two separate policies and is easier to manage for renewals and claims. If you do go separate, make sure you’re not dual insured on any parts of the policies.
You should always insure your property for the rebuild value and NOT the market value. Part of the value of your home is in the land, which doesn’t factor into the amount you need to insure, which is why rebuild value is usually less than the market value. If you’re insuring for the market value instead, then you could be overpaying for your insurance.
Some circumstances may make it hard for you to find insurance with a normal home insurance policy. If you’re having trouble, the British Insurance Brokers Association have a tool for finding brokers who specialise in non-standard requirements. For more information go to www.biba.org.uk/find-insurance
In most cases, no. ‘Unlimited’ just means that they will insure you for whatever amount you need. For most people though, policies with fixed amounts will often suffice and will work out cheaper. Do you really have more than £1 million of buildings or £100,000 of contents to insure? If not, then our home policy will be more than enough for you.
The easiest way to explain the difference is to imagine you’re moving house. Everything you take with you is contents, and more or less everything that’s left behind is buildings (walls/roof/garage/shed and permanent fixtures/fittings like your kitchen and bathroom suites). Most take out combined cover, but if you don’t you’ll need to cross-check policy wordings to make sure you don’t have any gaps.
Yes, it’s usually a good idea. Medical costs abroad can get very expensive, particularly in places like the USA. But even in Europe, without travel insurance it can be very costly to have to fly back home or change travel plans if you fall ill and require care. Also if you want to benefit from cancellation cover before going on holiday, make sure you’ve bought cover when you book the trip.
You need cover for the amount it would cost to completely replace everything with new items. Alternatively, our cover limit is £100k, so you’re fine as long as you have less than this in total.
For unexpected events or losses that would otherwise cause you a financial problem to deal with. The easiest example is the total loss of your house, which most wouldn’t be able to afford to rebuild without insurance.
The two often work together to help you in a crisis. Home Emergency will send a tradesperson out to help the immediate issue (like stopping further damage being caused) while your Home insurance will pay for the damage that has already been caused, which is typically not as time critical.
Hopefully you learned something new from these questions – check out for the rest of our blogs for more information and useful tips about insurance.
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