Top Five Mistakes Made When Insuring Your Home

Home insurance customers regularly make the same errors

Home insurance customers regularly make the same errors that cost them money when arranging their policies.

If you bear these points in mind when talking to your insurance company, you can save yourself time, hassle and money in the long run:

1. Under insuring

Most people just can’t be bothered to go around their home listing their possessions and working out the cost, so end up making a wild stab in the dark at how much their stuff is worth.

This figure is important because it sets the sum insured on your home contents policy.

If you guess under the value of your possessions, if you come to make a claim, you won’t get the full value of the possessions you have lost back.

2. Over insuring

Over insuring is the opposite of under insuring.

Your stab in the dark about the value of your possessions could end up way over the top.

You set the sum insured but are wasting a fair amount of the money you are paying the insurance company because any settlement will never be more than the value of the possessions regardless of the sum assured.

3. Wrong rebuild cost

This is failing to set the right rebuild cost at the start of your buildings insurance policy. If the figure is too low, you won’t get enough back to rebuild your property and if it’s too high, you’re paying for insurance cover that you can’t claim against.

4. Failing to disclose material facts

A material fact is a piece of information an insurance company considers when calculating your premium.

Under the terms of your policy, not only do you have to declare all material facts when arranging your insurance, you also have to tell the company immediately any changes that might affect the insurance occur.

Telling just the slightest untruth or missing out something that might change the terms of the policy could lead to the insurance company voiding your policy when you come to make a claim.

5. Failing to read the small print

The devil’s often in the detail, and with an insurance policy, that’s in the small print.

Make sure you read the terms and conditions of your policy and keep to them.

These will tell you under what circumstances the company will pay out – and when they won’t.

More and more insurance policies are voided because the policyholders have failed to keep to the conditions by failing to take reasonable steps to look after their property by providing proper security, setting a basic maintenance regime to deal with minor repairs before they cause damage and generally looking after their own homes.

Taking a little time when arranging your insurance to consider the amount of cover you actually need and then once you have sorted out the policy, taking a few minutes here and there to look after your home and possessions definitely pays off in the long run.