Recent information published by Lloyds shows that the average claim for theft from gardens is £730. When you think about it it’s not surprising. Think about the luxury garden furniture, barbecues, the patio heaters, lawn mowers and hand and power tools etc you keep outside or in your shed.

Mainstream home and contents policies usually include garden contents but with limitations. These vary widely from a few hundred pounds to several thousand depending on the insurance company. And usually there is also a limit on the maximum value of any one item.

So now’s a good time to tot up what your “garden contents” are worth. Then read the small print on your policy. If you have something which is especially valuable like a sit on mower, then it’s as well to speak to your insurer. They may want it to be specified and they will certainly want it to be locked up.

Some insurers will increase their cover for “garden contents” for a modest premium so it’s well worth speaking to them before you switch to another insurer.

As bonfire night and hallowe’en approach, it’s a wise move to check your home and contents insurance. Statistics from the insurance industry show that burglaries shoot up by 25% on bonfire night to the highest level of the year – and, guess what, claims for fire damage rocket by 45%!

And if you are going to have a bonfire or light fireworks, even in your own back garden make sure that your home insurance covers you for “personal liability”. A mishandled firework or a few wayward sparks from a bonfire can have expensive repercussions. Defending and settling claims for damage to property or if someone is injured, is beyond most people’s finances unless they have public liability cover within their home insurance policy – so check it out this week!

And perhaps for good measure, you should check your car insurance too! hallowe’en is a really bad time for malicious damage to cars.

No we’re not talking about your bedroom furniture – it’s your clothes we’re interested in!

Just stop now and ask yourself how much your clothes collection is worth and how much it would cost to replace if, for example, it was destroyed in a house fire.

Ok, what have you decided? £1,000, £3,000 or even £5,000?

You may be surprised to learn that the average ladies wardrobe is worth about £7,000! On average women spend £1,000 a year on clothes and accessories with one in ten spending almost £5,000 a year. That sort of spending soon pushes up the value of your wardrobe!

So now back to that boring subject, insurance. Is your wardrobe fully insured? Most insurers cover clothes under their home insurance policies but not usually on a new for old basis. This means that if your clothes were damaged by a burst water pipe etc, the insurer would make a deduction for wear and tear when working out what your claim is worth. Handbags come under the classification of “house contents” and as such are usually replaced new for old.

If you are one of those clothes high flyers spending £5,000 and more, and have particularly expensive items of clothing, then you will have to specify them on the policy.

Our advice is that if your existing home and contents policy doesn’t really fit the size of your wardrobe collection, then speak to an insurance broker whom can find one of the more specialist insurers who will give you the cover you need.

Do you know the value of your downloads – the games, films, and music you’ve got on your PC or laptop? Estimates put £1,000 on the value of a typical downloaded collection.

And now the key question. Is your download collection insured within your home and contents insurance policy? Many insurers will cover you for up to £2,500 for loss, theft and water damage - but cover can have restrictions.

Normally, the insurer will expect you to have backed up your collection or have a back up on a portable MP3 player. In this situation it would be easy to reload them without having to make a claim unless both your computer and the MP3 went missing or became damaged.

The insurers will rarely offer cover for computer failure and if you want to take your downloaded collection away from home, you’ll need to insure it under the personal possessions provisions of your policy.

Author: Dot Piper

When it comes to home contents insurance, it’s so easy to get left behind in your valuations. It’s simple enough to go through the rooms, in your mind. Lounge – carpet, sofas, display cabinet and contents. Bedrooms, carpets again, beds, furniture ……. And so on. All things moveable in your home should be covered by your contents insurance. It’s also simple enough to overlook things. For example, don’t the above rooms also have curtains, framed pictures, the odd painting or two? The pictures may mean a lot to you but their frames will be very tempting to a thief. Then there are the garden and outbuildings contents. Garden furniture and tools, the children’s bicycles, outdoor toys and even the plants in the garden. All of these need to be taken into consideration.

The range of expensive electrical goods is even more tempting to the thief. Not easily identifiable and easily sold on in the case of theft, also expensive to replace in the case of accidental damage. Include all the television sets, CD and DVD recorders and players, computers (don’t forget the lap top/s), CD’s, DVD’s (Norwich Union tell us they allow £10 per CD, so your collection can easily add up to a fair sum.) Then there are the iPods, Game Boys, mobile phones and accessories. The average family home contents are typically valued at around £45,000.

If you’re under insured, any claim that you make on your policy will be down rated accordingly. Some insurers, Norwich Union Direct for example, will simply pay out up to the limit of the sum initially insured and then you have to make up the shortfall. Other companies will simply reduce the payment in proportion to the amount understated. If they consider your contents to be worth £30,000 and your cover stands at £20,000, then whatever your claim, it will be reduced by one third.

More Than are one of the companies using the second example shown above. Furthermore they have taken action to solve the problem and have recently decided to enforce increased cover for their clients, to the tune of 25% as their cover comes up for renewal. This will apply to all of their 470,000 clients.

You would be well advised to re-assess the value of your home’s contents. There’s a helpful website run by the Association of British Insurers. There you will find advice and a handy checklist to download and use. Their address is www.abi.org.uk

Our advice so far has referred to home contents insurance, but it may be as well to consider values on Buildings cover too. The sale value of your home can easily be calculated by whatever price similar properties in your area are achieving. The insurance value differs in that you don’t have to cover the value of the site. The cost of demolition, clearing of the site and rebuilding the property will be the key factors. The easiest way to find this out is to contact your insurer and ask them to recalculate the value of the property. The way they carry this out is to take the number of rooms and their use. They then come to a value, based on your post code. In this way they will arrive at the estimated rebuilding costs of your property.

So, it may be time to assess your home and contents insurance generally. Then relax and enjoy the benefits.

Technocrati Tags[home insurance]

Author: Catriona Singfield

25% of us have suffered theft from our gardens and outbuildings. That’s up to 5,000 people a day. And to make matters worse, this number is set to rise as the garden and landscape business takes off. As a nation of plant lovers, Britons spend nearly £4 billion annually on products for the garden, according to statistics gathered by the Horticultural Trades Association. It’s no wonder thieves see golden opportunities among the flowers!

And yet, according to a survey conducted by top insurers Churchill, 38% of us don’t take what’s on the outside of our homes into account. Garden security is not a priority, despite the high cost of the equipment we often leave outside – lawnmowers, patio heaters, gas barbecues – all rather obvious and tempting targets. But what of the plants themselves? Thieves have not been slow to take advantage, as Mrs J P from Glamorgan was shocked to find out. She glanced out of her window to see a man “dashing up the street clutching one of our plants”. Sadly this is not an isolated incident: 18,000 similar thefts were reported last year, with the most common item on the thieves’ list being the household favourite, the hanging basket.

The average shed contains £1,300 in tools, toys and sports gear, with only a padlock between it and the opportunist with a break-in on the mind. It isn’t much to guard all that gear – imagine leaving the TV or your DVD collection outside. Would you expect it to be there in the morning?

But you may think that you can relax; after all, your insurance covers your garden and shed – or does it? Not all policies include items left outside, and Home and Contents usually only includes things secured in a locked outbuilding or shed.

To illustrate this by example, consider the policy offered by Norwich Union Direct. They allow £250 worth of cover for objects left outside unsecured, and £1,500 for items under lock and key. Unfortunately if you have invested in a new patio heater and a stylish gas-powered barbecue for those heady summer evenings, this may not be enough. Other high street insurers such as the AA, the Prudential and Abbey provide up to £500 for items left in the open, and Lloyds TSB, Direct Line and Esure offer up to £1,000. More Than come out on top with the highest limit of £2,000.

This is fine for hard goods, but what about the growing plants that make up your garden? They are an increasingly popular target for theft, but only a few insurers provide cover for them. Skipton and Saga both offer special provision for plants, as well as the members’ insurance of up to £10,000 from the Royal Horticultural Society. So far, the idea of plant insurance just has not been taken up by most mainstream insurance providers.

So what can you do to protect yourself? In addition to making sure your garden is a thief-proof as it can be, try our tips below for security and peace of mind on the patio:

§ Lock up as much as possible. Make good use of a shed or garage for storage – out of sight is out of mind for many chance thefts. Buy the best quality padlock you can afford.
§ Include your shed or garage in your burglar alarm circuit. That way you will know instantly if anyone tries to break in.
§ Mark your expensive garden items as you would those from inside your home – you can use a special permanent marker that glows under UV light. Keep an account of your purchases, and how much they cost.
§ Secure any valuable pots or ornaments if you can.
§ If you have an entrance to the rear of the house, fit a gate and make sure you keep it locked.
§ Fit sensor lights for the outside of your home.
§ If you lay a gravel path, you will hear any intruders approaching, and the prospect of a noisy path will also put them off.
§ Plant a prickly hedge or other spiky plants to dissuade thieves.
§ Check the small print to make sure that your insurance covers the items you keep outside – as we’ve said here, they may not be included.

Check the Internet for Home and Contents Insurance policies – not only can you find the best deals, but most insurers offer discounts for buying

Technocrati Tags[home insurance]

Author: Bridget Carter

They are all the things that people enjoy using in their homes after hours or at the weekends – DVD players, computers, cameras and televisions with plasma screens.

But have you ever considered how much these items have pushed up the value of your home contents insurance?
It is these electronic luxuries which has made the cost of one’s contents insurance a third higher than it was ten years ago.

If you have small children, it is unlikely there is much of high value in their bedrooms. But several years on, your children’s rooms are likely to be littered with game boys, computers, expensive DVDs, sports gear and the list goes on. Even jewellery is something that often gets forgotten or over looked when it comes to contents insurance.

So having said this, perhaps it is worthwhile reassessing the value of your home contents. The reason why it is important to make this assessment is that if you are under-insured the firm with which you have taken out the insurance policy may not be prepared to pay out what is owed to you. These firms are legally within their rights to do this. Most of the time, however, the approach they will take is to just pay out less than your contents is worth.

The good news is that insurance companies are fiercely competitive when it comes to contents insurance and so many offer discounts for more than one policy. They also slash premiums just to secure extra clients. For example, the company Direct Line will discount your insurance if you buy with them on-line and also if you take out cover for both contents and buildings. Remember that things such as burglar alarms can drive down your premium costs.

The other thing that is useful to know is that if you have an item that is worth over £1500, you might have to insure that separately. Most of the time a typical house contents policy has a £75,000 limit. Some specialist insurers offer high net worth policies. These are policies where your possessions are covered but you do not need to state individually what they are. For those with an overseas house or belongings that they move between various properties, these sort of policies are idea.

It might be useful to know that Norwich Union, HSBC, Axa, Barclays, Chubb and Hiscox all include identity fraud in their insurance cover, but this is normally covered by your bank anyway. Also, Chubb and Zurich will cover the risk of attack in your own home.

If you are a first time home buyer, it can be the case that the company that offers you a mortgage also requires you to take out the lender’s in-house buildings and contents insurance, despite the fact that there are cheaper options elsewhere.
Regardless of where you take out your contents insurance or the deal you opt for, it is important you keep record of the true value of your goods in your home. If you are under insured, you might find it to be the case that you are not insured at all.

Technocrati Tags[home insurance]

Author: Emma Mayo

Spring, summer and bank holiday weekends are the times that people decide to spruce up their homes. Whether it’s a lick of paint on the ceiling, or a full-blown overhaul of the house, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong. You could spill paint all over the carpet for example. Or what if you accidentally put a hole through the ceiling?

DIY disasters are not necessarily covered by a standard home and contents insurance policy. To get the right cover, you need ‘accidental damage insurance’ which may not be included automatically in the policy. If it isn’t, it will be an optional extra which you will need to pay for. Standard insurance policies cover a range of common incidents including fire. Water damage, subsidence and theft – DIY mistakes or general accidents in the home are not considered to be ‘standard’. However, some policies will automatically include damage to electrical items like the TV, DVD player and music equipment.

Some items in the house are automatically insured against accidental damage, like baths and sinks for example, however if the damage arose because of a DIY incident then you will probably need the extra accidental damage cover to make a claim.

If you do a lot of DIY, or a member of your household is particularly clumsy, then it’s always worth taking out accidental damage cover. It usually adds between £20 and £60 to the annual premium, a small price to pay compared to the cost of some DIY accidents. According to the insurer More Than, the accident that causes the most insurance claims is spilling paint on a carpet, a claim which typically costs around £1250. Knocking a nail through a pipe is also a common DIY accident, and the damage caused can add up to costs of around £2000 – not something you’d be too keen on paying for yourself!

If you’re a serious DIYer who takes on large and complicated jobs such as replacing the roof or building a new extension yourself, then accidental damage cover may not be enough. You’ll need to check with your insurer and possibly have to pay extra, as any damage caused could be extremely expensive to fix.

Home and contents insurance is one of the cheaper types of insurance, and although the accidental damage cover may make it more expensive that you would like, it’s still well worth getting, especially if you intend to do any DIY. All it takes is for one nail to go through a pipe and your insurance will instantly have paid for itself! There are excellent savings to be made by buying this type of insurance online. Norwich Union Direct offer a good deal which gives you 50% off your contents insurance if you buy buildings insurance with them. Many other insurers offer online discounts of 10-20%, and some also offer you a discount if you already insure your car with them. It will take less than 30 minutes to get a few quotes using the online forms.

So next time you do some DIY, check first that you are properly insured, as you could be just about to make an extremely costly mistake.

Technocrati Tags[home insurance]

We heard recently of an unusual and little known type of dormouse. They are to be found within a 25 mile radius of Tring, in Hertfordshire. It appears that Lord Rothschild had a fascination for wildlife and in 1902 he introduced these little creatures to his estate. They are actually an edible dormouse, otherwise known as “glis glis”.

In ancient Roman times, these 6” long dormice were fattened up to be consumed at banquets but they have turned the tables and now causing all manner of problems by eating their way through homes in the area. Cables and insulation seem to be their favourite diet. They are a protected species so can’t be eradicated by normal pest control methods; instead they need to be trapped professionally.

Vermin are causing havoc in the rest of the UK and ICM have done some research which reveals that one in ten households have had a problem with some type of pest within the past year. Some have been faced with hefty bills in an effort to rid themselves of the pests. There is help from the local council but as these pest infestations tend to be seasonal, there can be long waiting times. Private pest control contractors vary in efficiency and cost. It’s a case of “beware of the cowboy”, although it has to be said there are some excellent and experienced firms out there – the problem is that the industry is unregulated, so there is no standard to use as a comparison when considering the choice of a contractor.

When it comes to insurance, it’s unusual for household policies to cover damage from vermin. It’s usually excluded via an accidental damage clause. You may find that consequential damage would be covered, i.e.: if vermin chewed through an electrical wire and consequently caused a fire, most insurers would cover this.

The most common pests are grey squirrels, rats, mice, wasps and hornets. Esure offer an add -on to its home insurance cover. For an additional £21.99 per year they will offer a vermin control service covering problems with the above five pests. Even the cost of removing a hornet’s nest could be as much as £100 so this extra is certainly worth considering.

Squirrels can cause the greatest problems. Should they gain access to your home, normally through the loft space, then they can cause absolute mayhem. Broken ornaments, chewed valuables and furniture often result. The cover provided by Saga is unusual in that all its household policies include cover for damage caused by these creatures. It’s Cover Plus policy provides cover for damage caused by all pests, with the exception of damage done to pedal cycles!

It would be unwise to underestimate the damage which could occur should rats and mice gnaw through cables. Fires can be cause in this way and rats can even gnaw through pipes, causing flooding. There is a case of the whole upper floor of a house collapsing because of the wooden joists had been chewed through by rats.

Some sensible precautions should be taken to avoid problems. Outside the house, make sure that bags containing rubbish are put into lidded dustbins. Clear up around bird tables and feeders. Don’t put cooked food onto compost heaps. Drains and covers should be checked for damage and general clutter should be tidied. Inside the house, vermin is attracted to pipe work and this is how they move around. Seal up holes using steel wool or plaster. Check around the hot water tank, under the sink and in the loft. Avoid storing packing tissue, cardboard boxes and things like cuddly toys and unwanted clothes up there – they make a perfect ready made nest for vermin.

So there’s a lot you can do to avoid problems. However, should they occur, you’ll need your insurance cover. An on line insurance broker will be able to sort out what’s available and will find you with the best way to get some insurance against these pests.

Technocrati Tags[home insurance]

If you don’t ensure that the value of your contents is kept up to date, you’ll have to dig into your own pocket if anything from your home is damaged or stolen.

It’s all too easy to become under insured. New electrical goods are a thief’s best dream and the value in these items can soon mount up. Those mobile phones, iPods, televisions and lap toptops are always at the top of most thieves “must have” list. Then there’s all your other purchases you’ve made during the year. So when you look back at what you’ve bought and what the value of your insurance cover is, you’ll see it’s all too easy to become under insured.

If you make a claim and the insurance company concludes that you’re under-insured, the payout on your claim will be reduced. So if you have insured your contents for £20,000 and the insurer estimates that it would cost £30,000 to replace them, then any claim you make could be reduced by at least 50%.

But not all insurers are so tough. Norwich Union Direct pays out up to the limit of the cover and then any shortfall is just hard cheese. More Than says that underinsured claims are reduced by up to 20%.

Most insurers have a minimum of at least £15,000 when it comes to Contents Insurance but that’s rarely enough. Bear in mind that the contents value of a typical family home now stands at just over £45,000.

So why not take a quick check of the value of your contents. And don’t forget to add in your CD collection, many do! Norwich Union values CD’s at £10 each so a collection of 500 will account for £5,000 of cover just by themselves! And then there’s the garden furniture and the things in your garden shed – they’re particularly vulnerable! Even the plants in your garden need to be included!

More Than have been so concerned about the under-insured problem that they’ve recently increased the cover for all of their 470,000 clients by 25%.

A spokes person for More Than said, “The increases will be made from customers’ renewal dates. There will be no direct effect on premiums until then”. Other insurers are certain to follow suit in the near future.

If you take or advice and recalculate the value of your contents, you can find a useful checklist for householders at the web site run by the Association of British Insurers, www.abi.org.uk.

Remember that Contents insurance covers everything that’s moveable in your home – that includes your carpets and curtains. But immoveable items such as kitchen furniture and fixed lighting are covered by your Buildings insurance. It’s the same rule outside. Your child’s toy paddling pool is covered by your contents insurance but your big boys’ and girls’ hot tub is covered under your Buildings insurance!

And whilst you’re at it reconsider the cover you’ve got for your Buildings insurance. The easiest solution is to contact your insurer and they’ll recalculate it for you based on the number and types of room you have and your post-code. It’s not the sale value of your house you have to insure for. It’s the cost of demolition and rebuilding that counts. Your insurer will price rebuilding costs on your post-code.

Most claims on home and contents insurance proceed smoothly, except perhaps for the occasional argument about how much something was worth. But another re-occurring problem is where the damage is due to poor maintenance of the building itself. The insurers take a very dim view of this and may scale down or even reject your claim, as a result.

Our advice is to give your house an annual Maintenance MOT every spring. By carrying out a few simple checks, it’s possible to catch problems at an early stage.

Snow, frost, rain and wind put the biggest day-to-day strains on the structure and heating in your home. Most homes develop a few problems in the winter months, so a check in spring can save considerable time and expense further down the line. It’s not as if you’ll be paying out money that you could claim later on your insurance. Indeed, any costs included in a claim that were really a maintenance issue, will automatically be rejected by your insurer.

Here’s our ten point MOT for your home:

1. Get a pair of binoculars and check out your roof. Search for slipped, cracked or loose tiles. A leaking roof can result in major damage and allow rot to take hold in the roof. There’s also a safety issue. If a tile falls off, someone could be badly injured. Even your car could be damaged!

2. Check out the exterior paintwork. Any peeling, cracked or blistered paintwork needs attention. Then touch it up to preserve the wood from further cracking. Summer time can be especially hard on paintwork with expansion and contraction cracks resulting from high temperatures and big temperature changes.

3. Clean the gutters out. Autumn especially creates a lot of debris that needs to be removed. Blocked gutters and down spouts can cause immense damage if water is left to overflow and penetrate. Just be careful with this job. Working with ladders is dangerous so maybe you can get your window cleaner on the job!

4. If you’ve used your chimney heavily during the winter, get it swept. The danger is that any heavy build up of soot could catch fire.
5. Walk around the house and make sure that nothing is covering over, or bridging, the damp course. Garden rubbish pilled up against the wall is the most common offender. If damp gets past your damp course you’ll end up with damp inside the house, damage to your decoration and plasterwork, and probably rot.

6. When you are planting trees and shrubs you need to make sure that their roots are not going to cause damage. If roots penetrate your drains or get into your foundations you could be in for horrendous bills. Popular and willow trees are some of the worst offenders. Did you know that you shouldn’t have a popular tree within 150 feet of a property? New houses built within this distance, have to have specially reinforced foundations!

7. Whilst on the subject of trees, you should be aware that your Buildings insurance will usually cover you for damage caused by falling trees. But what happens if the tree was rotten or the bough already damaged? Yes, you’ve guessed it, that’s a maintenance issue. Unless you can show that you took reasonable care of the trees, the insurer could refuse any subsequent claim. If have big trees you are advised to get an annual report from a tree expert detailing any work that is needed – and don’t forget to carry it out!

8. Do you have any plants climbing up the house? Check out that they are not causing damage to your brickwork. Ivy is the biggest offender.

9. Now inside your house. Get your central heating boiler serviced – it’s had a hard winter! Also get it checked out for carbon monoxide emissions. Whilst he’s there, get the engineer to give your radiators the once over.

10. Finally, up into the loft. Check for signs of water penetration, and rodent damage to the exposed wiring. Squirrels love warm lofts and they love wiring! The fire brigade hate squirrels! And whilst you there, remove any old wasp or bird nests and block up the openings.

Have you ever totted up how much you spend on insurance? Home and Contents insurance, life insurance, critical illness insurance, medical insurance, income protection insurance, travel insurance, mobile phone insurance and car insurance but to name a few.

Try adding up your premiums now – we think you’ll be shocked at how much you spend.

You’ll be even more surprised to learn there’s also a likelihood that you’ve duplicated some of the cover you’re paying for. Cut the duplication out and you’ll save precious money.

Many people have insurance cover for theft, legal expenses, loss of income, even death without even realising it. This arises because lots of people don’t fully appreciate what’s covered by the policies they have, especially if the policies had been arranged for them by brokers and financial advisers.

In a recent survey, The Financial Services Authority (FSA) found that optional extras such as legal expense cover and breakdown recovery, were often added to car insurance policies without checking whether the policyholder already had cover elsewhere. It is also quite common to find that people with Income Protection policies have duplicated their cover via their payment protection policies taken out to cover monthly mortgage, loan and credit card payments. The issue here is that if they claim on their Income Protection policy, their payout will be reduced because part of their claim is already covered by their other payment protection policies – so that’s a waste of money.

The Financial Ombudsman confirms our view saying, “People often contact us when they find themselves over-insured. They often do not realise until they make a claim that they have been paying for a policy that provides very little, if any, benefit”.

There is also plenty of evidence that some people simply don’t understand what they are actually insured for. Take the situation of Amanda Lariviere from West Yorkshire. The mother of two is recovering from ovarian cancer and had an allergic reaction to chemotherapy which was still keeping her off work. She decided to visit her building society to enquire if she could raise some cash by re-mortgaging to pay an unwelcome tax bill. The Society’s adviser wisely asked her to bring in all her life insurance policies so that they could be used in her re-mortgage application. So imagine her surprise when the adviser told her that the policies with Scottish Provident and Norwich Union which had been costing her £80 per month, were not life insurance policies at all – they were in fact critical illness policies with a combined insured value of £100,000. She has now received a payout from both policies, enough to pay off some of her mortgage and her tax bill!

Some typical insurance cover to check out.

Life Insurance
Some employers provide life cover within their pension schemes. Called death-in-service benefit, it typically pays out a lump sum worth 3-4 their annual salary if the employee dies whilst employed by the company.

Critical Illness Insurance
Critical Illness cover is often sold as an optional extra on a life insurance policy. Furthermore, some employers provide critical illness cover as part of their employment package. Check out exactly what you’ve got.

Income Protection and Payment Protection Insurance
Permanent Medical Insurance (PMI) is also known by some as Income Protection Insurance. It pays out the insured monthly sum if the policyholder is off work because of illness due to a wide range of specified medical conditions - and some policies will also pay out during redundancy. The policy continues to pay out indefinitely or at least until the policy comes to the end of its term.

The point is that PMI policies eliminate the need for Payment Protection insurance – the sorts of policy frequently sold alongside credit cards, loans and mortgages to maintain monthly payments. Indeed, you cannot make claims against more than one insurance policy for the same event – only one policy will agree to pay out! (The others will reduce their payouts by the value of money you are receiving from the other policies)

Legal Expense Insurance
Cover for legal expenses concerning disputes relating to your home, will normally be included in your home and contents insurance policy. Many car insurance policies provide legal expense cover as standard or as an optional extra. Some trade unions also include automatic access to legal advice as part of their service to all their members. Check this out before you pay for more cover!

Mobile Phone Insurance
Most mobile phone policies have a hefty excess. You might be better off changing to a pay-as-you-go plan.

ID Theft Insurance
According to the consumer magazine “Which”, you’re only legally responsible for the first £50 if your identity is stolen. Is the premium worth protecting just £50?

Other Insurance cover
Most credit cards automatically insure your purchases for a specified number of days following their purchase. Take Barclaycard for example. If you use Barclaycard to buy something between £50 and £2,000, you are insured against accidental damage and theft for the next 60 days.

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Technocrati Tags[life] [insurance]

If you can’t get insurance for your house, beware – the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors warns that uninsurable houses could lose up to 80% of their value and throw the homeowners into negative equity.

And it’s a flood risk that is most likely to make your house uninsurable.

According to a recent report 6.5 million homes are already at risk from flooding of which 1.5 million are in areas considered to be at high risk. By 2030 if global warming continues, this 1.5 million figure could more than double.

In January 2003 the Association of British Insurers (ABI) agreed the principles which committed insurers to offering buildings and contents insurance for properties in areas which are at risk of flooding once in seventy five years so long as flood defences were in place or to be built by the end of 2007.

It’s the responsibility of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) to develop and maintain these flood defences but there’s widespread concern in the insurance industry that insufficient is being done. As a result the industry has warned that there could be widespread withdrawal of insurance cover if more is not done now to protect homeowners. In the mean time those in areas threatened by flood could find their insurance premiums soaring. In some cases premiums have already increases by more than 400% and in a tiny number of cases, cover has been withdrawn altogether.

Environmentalists have warned that unless DEFRA gets it’s skates on, the UK’s bill for flood damage could increase from the current £950 million a year to £3.2 billion. The average household flood damage claim costs insurers £30,000 and even localised events like the Boscastle flood of 2004 in Cornwall, cost the insurers £15 million. The government has completed flood defences in many high risk areas and protection for a further 80,000 homes is due this year, yet many areas remain vulnerable.

You can check whether DEFRA thinks your home is at risk of flooding by visiting www.environment-agency.gov.uk. The DEFRA maps were originally designed for planning purposes and provide information on a post-code basis.
Whilst many British insurance companies use this DEFRA information others like More Than, have their own flood maps which look at individual properties rather than post code areas. This means that if your insurer surcharges you for flood risk and uses the DEFRA information, you may still be able to get insurance at normal rates if an insurer using it’s own flood data identifies that your property is truly outside an at risk zone.

The ABI has emphasise the pressure on DEFRA to improve flood defences warning that unless the government continued to increase its spending on flood defences, the insurance industry may not continue their commitment to the 2003 principles. That would be bad news for many homeowners.

Last year the average premium for Buildings Insurance went up by 1% to just over £205 and the average for Contents Insurance rose by 2% to £151. But within the market we’ve seen some much bigger rises – for example, Norwich Union pushed up its premiums by 6%.

So what’s happening? We seem to see premiums rising year after year. Surely with the home insurance market being so competitive, you wouldn’t expect to see such inexorable price rises?

Lets look at the situation.

The average cost of claims under the buildings part of the insurance always rises in line with the cost of rebuilding your house. That’s a reflection of the rising price of labour and building materials. So as these costs rise, so do your premiums. And there’s also the fact that cost inflation also affects the insurance companies own operating costs. They are bound to add a little extra on for that!

Then there’s the British weather. We don’t live in a hurricane zone as Michael Fish would be the first to point out, but nevertheless it’s a fact that storms and especially floods, are becoming more frequent problems. Flood damage is particularly destructive with the average insurance claim in the £15,000 to £30,000 range. (Source: Association of British Insurers). And during the last 18 months we have seen particularly destructive floods create headline news at Helmsley in North Yorkshire, Carlisle, and Boscastle in Cornwall. Those events cost the insurers multi-millions.

The cost of burglary is also rising with the average claim now around £1,400. The main reason is two fold - burglars seem to find their pickings easier to come by and sell on. It seems to be down to the valuable electronic gismos that families are buying – the laptops, I pods, digital cameras, flat screen TV’s and the like. The other reason is that burglars are increasingly targeting well-off neighbourhoods.

Against this background the insurers are now able to price home and contents insurance by postcode. This means that if their records show up a problem with flooding or an increasing incidence of burglary in you immediate area, their computers will weight your premium to reflect the extra risk.

To a certain extent, any no-claims discounts will help to offset these upward pressures. But don’t forget that your no-claims discount is capped after five years so after you’ve built up the five years, all the increases will land totally in your lap.

So what can you do to lower the amount you pay?

The biggest by far, must be to shop around every year for the best available deal. This may seem a chore, but thirty minutes on the Internet (including this web site!) should yield you results. Online customers usually qualify for an additional 10% discount and you can also agree to pay by direct debit – that can also trim off a bit more.

Then there are other things you can do, especially in the arena of home security. Install security locks on your windows, up-grade the locks on your doors, fit external security lighting, get a burglar alarm and join the local neighbourhood watch scheme. These will all earn you discounts but most will cost you money! Perhaps the peace of mind alone will be worth the expense. Only the local neighbourhood watch scheme comes free!

The good general rule is not to stick with the same insurer too long. Keep them on their toes as the rewards for loyalty don’t seem to last forever and your custom can all too soon be taken for granted.

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When you take out a mortgage you’re making a long-term commitment to make the monthly repayments for the duration of the mortgage. That will be over many years but you’re making that commitment without knowing what’s going to happen during that time. That’s a big risk. Mortgage Payment Protection Insurance is one of a range of insurances that includes life insurance and critical illness insurance, which you can take out to reduce that risk.

The purpose of Mortgage Payment Protection Insurance (MPPI) is to ensure that your mortgage repayments will continue to be paid if you’re off work for an extended period due to accident, sickness or unemployment.

If you have a normal repayment mortgage, the value of monthly MPPI cover needed equals the value of your monthly repayment. However, if you have an interest only mortgage, then the cover value needs to include the monthly the mortgage interest repayment plus the monthly cost of the savings vehicle you’re using to repay the mortgage at the end of its term. Remember that if your mortgage repayments were to rise due to an increase in interest rates, then you’ll need to increase the level of cover. Oh yes, the good bit – if you have a claim then the income payout is tax-free!

The best bit of advice we can give is always buy an MPPI policy where the premium can be cancelled without penalty at any time. Never, accept a policy where the future cost of premiums is added to the mortgage or loan in any way – those types of policy tend to work out very expensive.

As with most forms of insurance, you’re likely to find it cheapest on the internet. Indeed, this site has teamed up with British Insurance to offer you a superb MPPI deal. Click here for more details.

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Despite a drop in the number of household burglaries, the value of items stolen is increasing. In percentage of burglaries where the value of stolen articles exceeds £1,000 has risen from 25% in 2004 to 33% in 2005.

It’s because thieves are increasingly targeting wealthier areas and many householders own a range of small highly valuable electronic items that can be easily resold. Items such as laptop computers, games consoles, digital cameras, mobiles and iPods are high up on the thieves shopping list. So taking these items alongside the more traditional haul of jewellery, cash, TV’s and DVD recorders quickly moves the value stolen well above the £1,000 mark.

In addition, police and the insurers are worried about the link between household burglaries and identity theft. There has been a 300% surge in the number of burglaries in which credit cards are stolen. It all adds up to over £1 billion of property stolen each year.

So a good tip for 2006 – make sure the value of cover on your Contents Insurance is fully up to date. Write down each and every item of value and estimate what it would cost you to replace everything, new, at today’s prices. Walk from room to room, even garage and the shed (and remember the loft/roof area) and take notes.

And don’t forget your food, clothes and soft furnishings. A thief may not be too bothered with them but if you house caught fire, or you have a flood, everything is at risk and these items alone could easily add up to £3,000.

Wherever possible remember to keep receipts for the more expensive items as this will aid identification and very much speed the insurance claim process. And where it’s difficult to establish the correct value of an item, for example with antiques, get an expert valuation. It’s a bit of a hassle and there’ll be a valuation fee to pay, but you need to be as accurate as possible especially with valuable items that you’ll need to list separately on your policy.

Additional Home Insurance Topics
Additional reading - Why is home insurance so important
Additional reading - Good tips on reducing your premium