Increase your excess
Allhome insurance policies, building and contents, will come with a compulsory excess - the amount you’re personally expected to pay toward any repairs or replacements as part of any claim. You can lower your premiums by negotiating a higher voluntary excess on top of this compulsory excess. But don’t make so your excess so high that it’s beyond what you’d be able to afford.
Don’t overinsure
Your premiums will directly correlate to the total sum insured under your policy - the amount you’d be compensated for the total destruction or loss or your home and/or its contents. You can keep your insurance premiums to a minimum by only obtaining the exact level of cover you need for building and possessions.
It might be tempting to simply guess the total value of your property’s contents, or to err on the side of caution by opting for a very generous sum insured. Acontents insurance calculator can guide you as you take inventory of your home and total up the value of its contents, helping you arrive at a close estimate and save money.
The sum insured on yourbuildings insurance policy should be equivalent to the total cost of rebuilding your home in the event of its total destruction. But Few people beyond architects, builders, and surveyors will have any idea what this figure is - hint: it’s not the price you paid for the property, or its current value. The insurance industry offers two shortcuts for estimating the sum. Bedroom-rated policies ballpark the cost of rebuilding your home based on the number of bedrooms it has, while blanket cover policies offer you a very high or even unlimited amount of cover.
These will be both be overestimates and you’ll end up paying higher premiums than you need. You can save money by opting for a sum-insured policy, offering cover only for the exact cost of rebuilding. Use a chartered surveyor to help you arrive an accurate figure. An index-linked policy will factor in increases in the cost of rebuilding - including material and labour -over the term of the policy.
Increase security at home
When you’re looking forhome insurance, insurers will ask you questions about the property to determine how risky they believe it will be to insure. If you can demonstrate you’ve taken adequate security measures and reduced your risk of burglary and vandalism, your premiums will fall. In fact, without taking some of these precautions, you may struggle to get a policy at all.
Protect your home against disaster
Similarly, if you take measures to protect your home and its contents against destruction in a natural disasters and accidents, your insurer will see you as lower risk and reward you with lower premiums.
Compare home insurance
There’s substantial variation in the type, level of cover and price of home insurance policies on the market. To ensure you find the best deal, with the exact coverage you need and for the cheapest price, you’ll want tocompare home insurance quotes from as many insurers as possible.
Money Expert is a price comparison site, allowing you to gather quotes for home insurance from dozens of insurers in moments.
Once you have a home insurance policy, don’t allow it to automatically renew - rates will often be higher if you stick with the same provider. You can find substantial savings by running a freshhome insurance comparison each year.