Save on Home Insurance

Can you save on home insurance?

Do you just accept your home and contents insurance renewal quotation each year without question? If so you could be missing out on saving £pounds for very little effort!

This time of year my home insurance is up for renewal. I used to just let it automatically roll-over and renew by itself. But then I started to question why is my home & contents insurance still rising each year when I have made no claims. This together in times of austerity has made me check and review my home insurance renewal price every year since. And I have now saved money on my home insurance including contents on each occasion compared to the insurance renewal quotation!

Reduce your home insurance in 10 minutes
This year I have again saved and reduced my home & contents insurance by over 16%. And all it took to achieve this and save was 10 minutes of my time!

How did I save this money on my home insurance renewal premium?

• After receiving my home insurance proposal & renewal schedule I first checked what the premium would be after any taxes and discounts were applied.

• Next I checked a couple of the bigger UK insurance providers that have worked well for me in the past by getting a quotation from their web sites. I have had success in recent years with a good saving achieved from Churchill Home Insurance and Direct line Home Insurance Services. However there are several others worth trying and a quick internet search will provide these within its results page. Don’t just try one company though as I have found that they can vary significantly – there are a couple that I have found so far off the scale I haven’t tried or bothered with since but they may just work for your home insurance needs.

• Then I compared the quotation’s cover with that of my current insurance provider – checking the levels of cover and sum insured for buildings and contents, what excess would be required for any potential claims, single item limits, accidental damage, are they a regulated insurer, and any other smaller details.

• Once I had found a good quote with the same or very similar cover I got in touch with my current provider to give them the opportunity to match or bring down their renewal quotation. I have found this on occasions to work in the past so its a good idea to check. It also saves on paperwork if you can stay with your current home and contents insurance provider. If it doesn’t work and they will not match any insurance quotes received then you may want to ask for the auto-renewal to be cancelled at this stage. You can always reinstate later if required.

What about home insurance comparison sites
Another option is to try one of the home insurance comparison sites including confused.com, Compare the Market, Tesco Compare, Go Compare, and as used before in another Prudent Pete post for saving on energy prices – uSwitch! These services check your details and insurance needs with a range of insurers and brokers checking for the cheapest deals. Personally I don’t use these services for home insurance as I’m not a fan of entering lots of personal details in to sites that then search on your behalf but I’m sure they work for some and that there’s some good insurance savings to be achieved here too.

Check out the deals
Another way to save on home insurance is by checking for cashback offers – at the time of writing this post Lloyds Bank were offering £50 cashback for new customers when they buy combined buildings and contents online. Other insurance deals were also available from Halifax, Post Office, and M&S Home Insurance.

Keep saving on home insurance
So there you have it – another real-life money saving tip from Prudent Pete that’s being employed by myself every year to save on home insurance costs. It may not work forever, but I will continue to spend just 10-minutes of my time each year checking!