Home insurance

How high you set your home insurance excess depends on how much you can afford. With compulsory excess, your insurance provider sets the amount and you can’t change it.
With voluntary excess, you can change the amount. By raising your voluntary excess, your premiums are likely to be cheaper. But don’t set it too high – you want to make sure you can afford to pay both the compulsory and voluntary excess, should you need to make a claim.

Having a poor credit score may affect the cost of home insurance. But you’re still likely to be able to find an insurance provider with a policy and price that suits you.

For your valuables to be protected outside your home, you’ll need personal possessions cover. Some insurance providers include it as a standard feature with contents insurance, but others don’t.

If you do have personal possessions cover, restrictions could apply to what items you’ll be covered for outside the home. You’ll also need to add any valuable items worth more than £1,500 to your quote individually, to make sure they’re covered while you’re out and about.

Some home insurance providers need to know which types of door lock you have, because some are considered more secure than others.

• Five-lever mortice locks are often found on wooden front doors and require a key to both lock and open them. You could receive a discount on your premium if your lock has the British Standard Kitemark on it.
• Multi-point locking systems are commonly found on uPVC doors. If you need to lift up the handle to lock the door, you’ll probably have one of these. They have a minimum of three locking points that all lock simultaneously with the turn of a key.
• Night latches are mounted on the surface of a door so aren’t as secure as other types of lock. Their advantage is that they automatically lock the door when it closes. Double-locking night latches are the most secure as they need a key to open the door from inside and outside.

When working out how much buildings insurance to get, remember that you only need to insure the cost of rebuilding your home and not its market value. You can find the rebuild cost of your property in your home survey or by using the rebuilding calculator on the Building Cost Information Service website.

The best way to calculate the value of your home’s contents is to make an inventory of all your possessions. When you get a quote with us, you can use our handy calculator to help you add up the value of the contents in your home, room by room.

Find out more about how to estimate the value of your home contents.

Most buildings insurance policies will cover you for burst pipes and water leaks as standard. This is usually classed as an ‘escape of water’, whether it’s caused by burst pipes, blocked drains or a leaky washing machine.

If you do make a claim for an escape of water, however, you might find you have to pay a higher compulsory excess. That’s the fixed amount you’ll have to contribute towards the claim. Check your policy documents for specific details.