The renewal email arrived at 6.52pm on Friday 19 December, while I was grating cheese for a macaroni cheese. Our home insurance would cost £389.10 for the next year. Last year it was £296.40, and in between we hadn't claimed a penny.
That's £92.70 more, or 31%. The email didn't say why. I'm told renewal prices can move for reasons that have nothing to do with you, and an insurer or a broker is the person to ask about that. What I did was open a spreadsheet, which is how I cope with most things.
Making the quotes comparable
A quote is only worth anything if it's for the same policy. I wrote down what ours covered and checked every new quote against the list:
- Buildings sum insured of £160,000, which is the rebuild cost from a calculator rounded up, not what the house would sell for.
- Contents of £35,000.
- An excess of £250 in total (£100 compulsory and £150 voluntary), and the higher £350 for escape of water, which I only properly noticed when the bath waste dripped through the kitchen ceiling.
- Matt's road bike, specified at £1,450, plus personal possessions away from home, with the lock wording that goes with it.
- Legal expenses cover.
- No accidental damage, which we hadn't had in year one either.
The cheapest result on the first page of a comparison site was £241. It had £10,000 less contents cover, no bike cover and a £500 escape of water excess. I made a mistake in the first hour, too: I typed the bike in at £1,500 on one site and £1,450 on another, and spent ten minutes wondering why two nearly identical quotes were £4 apart. Fill in every box exactly the same each time, I now think. That's a note to myself, not instructions.
The phone call
On Saturday 3 January I rang the old insurer. After eleven minutes of hold music and being asked twice whether I was sure I wanted to leave, I was offered £352. That was a £37 cut on the renewal for no change at all, which is a funny feeling. It was still £33.40 more than the best like-for-like quote I had found, from a different insurer, at £318.60.
I took the £318.60. It's £70.50 less than the renewal and £22.20 more than we paid last year, about 7.5%. We paid it in one go again, because monthly was dearer on every quote. Spread over twelve months it works out at £26.55.
What we checked before switching
The new policy starts at midnight on Thursday 15 January, the moment the old one would have renewed. I made Matt stand behind me while I read the dates out, because a gap in buildings cover is the one thing I couldn't live with. We had the new documents in hand before I cancelled the old policy, and I asked for the cancellation in writing so that the auto-renewal couldn't quietly happen anyway.
Then the bits that hide in the small print. I read the wording for Matt's bike, which wants a lock of a stated security standard (Sold Secure rated) and the shed locked at home, as before. I checked that the sums insured on the schedule matched the quote, since it's easy for a figure to slip. Our mortgage terms say buildings cover has to be kept in place, so I sent the new schedule to the lender, in case they like to have it on file. Check your own terms on that one.
We didn't claim for the December leak, which cost £119 and sat well under the £350 excess. I did wonder, privately, whether that had anything to do with what we got offered. I haven't a clue, and the letter wasn't telling.
The old policy ends on Wednesday night. I've put a reminder in the calendar for 15 January 2027, titled "do this again".
