Time To Revamp Your Home Insurance

It seems as a nation we pay little attention to our home insurance cover once we’ve bought it, treating home contents cover like a commodity that doesn’t change but will continue to protect us and remain as good a deal as when we signed up to it. However the best price available and the levels of cover we require change for home insurance over time, every the most everyday habits like clothes shopping can have a vast impact on the worth of our home contents. Not only does being underinsured mean you can’t claim for those items you haven’t cover for, it can end up costing you for all claims due to the way the small print in home insurance works.

Privilege Insurance revealed figures that indicate that consumers will shop around for the best home insurance deal when they first take out their policy, but then will fail to shop around to see if changing providers will benefit them at a later date. In fact, four out of ten will just renew with their existing provider and one in seven who have insurance with their mortgage provider was the least likely to shop around. While there is no doubt that sticking with the same insurance provider is undoubtedly easier than looking for a new policy, and you know how your company treats its customers, shopping around could save you money.

However it’s not just the savings on your insurance premiums that are important in assessing your cover on a regular basis. As time goes by we naturally accumulate belongings that increase the value of our home contents. Without insurance that will cover the whole cost of our contents consumers end up only partially insured; and insurance companies will often only pay out partially on any claim if you turn out to be partially insured. Generally if you are underinsured by two-thirds the value of your contents, you are only entitled to two thirds of any claim made.

It’s surprising how easily our contents values rise as well, according to research from Barclays Insurance Services single women spend an average of £632 a year on new clothes and single men spend £456 on new clothes. Added to that singles only dispose of 5% of their wardrobe per year and simple clothes shopping can raise the value of your contents quite significantly by themselves. There are a number of companies who offer a minimum level of cover above the average value of household contents, which is £32,400, such as More Than, M&S and Zurich.

It’s clear that reassessing your insurance needs and the best policy for you is something that can save you money not only on your premiums but also on any claims that may be made. After all our homes and lives are not static but change over time for all sorts of reasons. Rather than home insurance being considered the kind of commodity that can be bought and forgotten about maybe it should be considered more as a part of a home, every now and then we wonder if its time for a revamp or change and consider what would suit us and our needs now rather than when we last purchased a policy.