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Home Insurance

Advise on Choosing a Home Insurer

For most of us, our homes are our biggest investment – or liability depending on your perspective. As such, it is highly prudent to ensure that you are protected against as many contingencies and unforeseen eventualities as possible. But is an industry that is swamped with underwriters and brokers, both online and traditional, how you go about finding the best home insurance for you.

Here are our quick considerations to getting the best home insurance for you;

Ensure you are purchasing appropriate Cover - First, you need to do some recognisance – i.e. gather some basic information about your home and insurance needs that will more than likely be required by a reputable underwriter. This includes such details as:

• The size of your home in square feet or square meters.
• Year approximate year in which your home was built.
• Some basic construction details such as whether what your wall’s are made of (brick, breeze block, timber etc) and whether your roof is flat, stated, tiled, or made of other material.
• The amount of money you wish to be covered for.
• Deductibles you want.
• Details including manufacturer of any safety features in the home, such as locks, window locks, smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, burglar alarms and other security systems.
• Any items that you wish covered – for which you have receipts – that regularly leave the home, including expensive jewellery, high end mobile phones and laptops.

Best Price vs Optional Extras - The Internet is a great place comparing all sort of products such as The Motley Fool’s Home Insurance Quote Service which allow you to easily you easily get quotes from the major insurance companies – most of which supply data to these engines. You will need the information you have gathered. However, with such services, it is worth noting that not every policy is the same when you begin to drill down to the details. A typical example is Legal& General’s Home Insurance which comes with free credit card protection up to £5000 which as a package is offers great protect for many, but does not always beat the competition on face value price as a result. If credit card fraud is something that scares you, this offering is worthy of consideration. You can find out more or purchase this insurance either online or on the phone at the Home Insurance section of their web site.

Without reading the terms and conditions of every policy, you will never know. However, in terms for getting the best price, these tools are very useful so long as you do not allow that to be your sole basis for deciding. As a general rule of thumb, once you have read the small print, you general get what you pay for.

Trust the Impartial Experts and seek Consensus - If you prefer to choose based on quality and consensus rather than price comparison, consider finding one that a reputable, authoritative and independent source such as ‘Your Money’ magazine has voted the best. Most recently, the best home contents insurance went to ASDA Finance Home Insurance which is underwritten by the Norwich Union.

Consult the Authority - If you have followed the steps above, then this step is redundant, but is worth saying anyway in case you have used different channels; “Make sure that your insurer and brokers are authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority, the government body that you have paid for through taxes to protect you in matters of finance. If you have any concerns, call them on their consumer help line.