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Home insurance: check your provider isn't hiding the best deal

Laura Shannon
by Lovemoney Staff Laura Shannon on 28 July 2012  |  Comments 5 comments

When it comes to renewing insurance, don't assume your existing insurer will offer you the best deal up front.

Home insurance: check your provider isn't hiding the best deal

I recently renewed my home insurance and although my existing provider had the best deal ready and waiting, it didn’t tell me so. 

Instead, my Halifax renewal letter told me that because I was a good customer with no claims to speak of I would be rewarded with a rise in premiums. Nothing unusual there I suppose, this is insurance we’re talking about. 

But once I compared deals online I discovered that I could save £80 if I switched to . . . erm, Halifax. So funnily enough I decided to go with the online deal I found rather than what they posted out to me. 

As I said, it’s common for insurers to quote worse premiums at renewal than you could get elsewhere. It’s not just home insurance either but car insurance and travel insurance too. But I was surprised, after gearing up to switch, to find that my insurer could not only offer better but the most competitive quote.  

Insurers like busy or lazy households

Bizarre as it may sound your existing insurer won’t always offer the most competitive deal (not until pushed anyway) and most of the time it would prefer to bank on your apathy. 

Companies rely on you being too busy to care and hope that when you see a quote that’s not too horrendous, you’ll just think ‘oh what the heck, let’s just pay and be done with it.’ 

We’re probably all guilty of having done that at some stage with our money; whether it’s buying insurance or haggling for a taxi on holiday. 

The best approach

Whenever you renew your insurance, the best approach is always to shop around and see what is the best deal on the market right now. Then phone your existing insurer and ask if it's willing to match the table-topping deal you've found. You'll often find that your existing insurer will then say 'yes' and match the best deal.

The unsual aspect of my story was that the table-topping deal was actually offered by my existing insurer! That just highlights how ridiculous the whole process is.

Compare don’t compromise

You can easily compare home insurance deals with lovemoney and it probably doesn’t take as long as you think. The process will be faster if you have some details to hand like the kind of locks you have on your doors and when your house was built (standard questions when getting an insurance quote). How old is my house can give you some handy pointers for this. 

Though of course if you already have home insurance with accurate details about your home you can just use this. 

If you need some tips to push down premiums, use our guide to help cut your home insurance costs. 

More on home insurance from lovemoney.com:

Homeowners in flood-risk areas face insurance nightmare 

Home insurance: the features you can't do without 

Why a barbecue could cost you thousands

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Comments (5)

  • FinanceAngel
    Love rating 2
    FinanceAngel said

    I find the auto renewal system really frustrating especially as i've moved home and been chaotic on paper work during the move. The insurance companies prey on people like me and manage to get money out of you even if you're not insuring with them by charging you cancellation fees and admin fees. Very annoying!! Had that both with my car insurance and with home insurance. Then you get charged by the banks for an unauthorised overdraft because you don't realise that the insuance company has taken money from your account until it's too late. Sharks the lot of them.

    Report on 30 July 2012  |  Love thisLove  0 loves
  • Tanni
    Love rating 91
    Tanni said

    Agree with plainvanilla.

    Insurance is a necessary pain that we all have to endure. Many years ago I discovered that these so called comparison sites act as middlemen/introducers to insurance companies. This means that they get a nice lump of money for selling insurance to the folks who use their service.

    The best way to ensure a good deal is to actually pick up the phone and ring around for best part of a week. This is not always possible and you will soon get fed up of the same questions and the the great variation in prices and cover. You may also notice that the same call centre takes enquires for a variety of different insurers! This will frustrate you further as the same call centre will give you differing prices and level of cover for the same insurer depending which number or promo code you call in with! It is not in their interest to give you the best price/cover as they get differing levels of commission aka kick backs from the insurers.

    I was lucky enough to work for an insurer and as such am speaking from experience and the experience of others. I still have a associates and mates that work for the insurance industry. They recommend we use brokers, who are still middlemen but receive less commissions and pass the savings to customers. The brokers try to generate a certain amount of business, ie £2 million worth in a year with 10% commision, rather than adding 25% commission to each sale. The former is better from a customers perspective as the prices and cover remain connsistent and one does not see crazy hikes of 60-300% like most renewal premiums. The best broker I have come across by far for home insurance is listed below along with their products.

    HOUSE INSURANCE - LANDLORD INSURANCE - BUY TO LET - CONTENTS - BUILDINGS

     

    They provide cover from some of the biggest names in the business; AXA-ROYAL/SUN ALLIANCE-GROUPAMA-EQUITY RED STAR-ZURICH-STERLING-ALLIANZ- LEGAL & GENERAL and many more.

    For a fast quote call  0208 587 1060 AND Mention broker REF 30494 to get the broker discounts etc.

    I have noted that these chaps always offer great cover, good customer service and the price is competitive. The reference number is the brokers code ( that they use to get discounts) yes each insurer/ broker offers different discounts to each broker/ customer.

    Make a note of the number and ref number and call it when the insurance renewal pops through the post, it does beat ringing around the call centres and will save you a headache or two as well as loads of time. And before I forget the number given to call is the broker line so your call will be answered quicker and the advisor will not necessarily be reading a script....yes a proper person who is willing to listen at the other end of the line rather than a commission hungry employee. Check it out and pass it around.

    Report on 05 August 2012  |  Love thisLove  0 loves

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