Getting the most from your house insurance
As we all know our home is generally our biggest investment or financial commitment ever made, especially with the huge rise in house prices in recent years. Our home is the most important item of material value in our lives and it also contains the most important items that, although they may have no monetary value, would be greatly missed from our lives should they be lost or damaged through whatever reason.
Items from our childhood, or your children’s childhood, old photographs, family heirlooms passed down through generations, your child’s first cuddly toy or perhaps their first pair of shoes.
These items play a fundamental role in our lives as human beings, its what makes us different from all other living species on this planet, the fact that we have an overwhelming bond with our material possessions. This is why we must take every possible precaution to prevent any damage happening to our home or its contents. These possessions need to be protected from theft, fire, flood, water and accidental damage. Most people will, to the best of their ability take care of and prevent any incidents happening to there home or belongings, but accidents can happen and damage happens to homes and contents every day, and when its least expected that’s why its so crucial to have your property well insured.
I have seen cases where people have made enquiries as to what
they should do after they have suffered a loss, which may have been a
fire, a flood or even burglary. Cases where people did not have the
right cover on their policy or not enough cover on their policy.
The reality was these people will not receive enough money from their
insurance provider to cover the cost of these repairs or replacement of
their contents and by this stage it is too late.
If you take in to account these following simple steps they
can greatly help you to get the most from your house insurance, you can
save money, and rest assured that if anything were to happen to your
home that you are covered.
Review your policy
Contact your insurance provider today and confirm that your policy is
active and that your policy is index linked, which means the value of
your policy will rise with inflation, it may mean an increase in
premium by a couple of per cent per annum but its crucial. Remember the
onus is on you, the policyholder to ensure your property is adequately
insured – it’s not up to your insurance company!
Don’t under or over insure
Buildings should be insured for the rebuild cost of the building, not
the market value of the building. If you under insure your property it
will most likely have an effect on any claim that you may have.
Similarly, it is important not to over insure your property. You will
end up paying a higher premium and should you have a claim it will only
be assessed on the rebuild cost of the property. The insurance market
currently recommends a rebuilding cost in the region of
€2000/m2 to rebuild.
Disclose all facts
There is a large element of trust involved with both parties engaged in
the insurance policy. Trust that you the policy holder will be truthful
to the insurance provider, and trust that the insurance provider will
reimburse you with any money lost through an insured risk, however if
you do not disclose any material facts to the insurance provider at the
proposal stage of the policy this can be deemed as being distrustful,
even if not being asked a specific question regarding an area
concerning your policy, if you feel it may be relevant you should
disclose it immediately.
Some examples of facts that should be brought to the
attention of your insurance provider are:
1. Have you notified your insurance company, if you renting a property.
2. You should notify your insurance company if you commence any
building works.
3. If you have built an extension onto your property, have you
increased your sums insured in line with the new sq. footage of the
building)
Fire and Burglar Alarms
There is a small deduction applied to premiums if you have fitted in
your home fully functional smoke and burglar alarms, however should you
avail of these discounts and an accident happen whereby either alarm
could have minimised the damage caused, and your particular alarm was,
for whatever reason was not in working order it could result in your
claim being declined or not receiving full payments. Our advice is not
to avail of these discounts.
Contents Cover
This is an area where the majority of people sell themselves short by
under insuring themselves. Policyholders don’t realise how
much contents they actually have, or they may not think that their
contents have any monetary value at all, and they may be right but
these contents need to be insured for the replacement value as opposed
to their current value.
Below you will find a list of contents and approximate
replacement value where over the last couple of months in fire cases we
have dealt with people haven’t included the value of these
contents e.g.
A three bed semi may have two adults and two children, every occupant
has their own individual passport and every occupant owns four pairs of
shoes. The adults each have 4 bottles of perfume or aftershave.
| Passports x 4 | €400 |
| Toiletries & Cosmetics | €1000 |
| Shoes & Trainers | €1200 |
| Cutlery & Crockery | €1000 |
|
Total
|
€3600 |
The above list of contents only represent a very minute amount of
peoples possessions and yet the replacement value is over 3,500 euros.
It is the opinion of insuranceworks that every house have contents
cover of at least 60,000 euros
