After the drought comes the deluge – that is a frequent pattern of English summers and this year it is expected to be an exceptionally long, hot spell – which may be storing up especially ferocious storms and flooding in the near future.
Are you prepared for such bad weather? Is your house adequately protected by the home insurance necessary to compensate you for any loss or damage? And just what is the cost of that home insurance?
Premiums increase for home insurance
A report by the Consumers’ Association’s Which? magazine on the 30th of May 2018 revealed that home insurance premiums have increased by an average of 7.6% across the country mainly because of the cold snaps blown in by the so-called Beast from the East and the higher than usual claims for flooding in earlier seasons.
Claims following freezing weather, flooding and water damage have increased throughout the UK, but there are regional differences in the extent to which these have affected the overall increase in premiums.
The rate at which your insurance premiums are likely to have risen is also determined by the type of home you own. Homes built before 1910, for example, are invariably more vulnerable to loss and damage caused by severe weather, so the average rate of increase in home insurance premiums in these cases is as high as 10.1%, says Which? magazine.
Surprisingly, perhaps, newer homes built after 2000 also suffered a higher than average increase in premiums – with those in this group facing an average increase of 9.6%.
Flood Insurance
Special mention might be made about your possible difficulties and frustrations in arranging reasonably priced flood insurance as part and parcel of your home insurance package.
Although the cost of home insurance premiums of course needs to reflect the volume of claims, the insurance industry recognises the difficulties that have been caused by price increases and a few years ago developed a reinsurance scheme in partnership with the government called Flood Re.
Thanks to some insurers’ ability to reinsure against the heightened risk of flood claims, participating companies – such as those used by us at UKinsuranceNET – are able to offer flood cover at a lower cost to homeowners than would otherwise have been the case.
Flood Re operates completely behind the scenes as far as the customer is concerned, and the latter need have no contact at all with the reinsurance scheme itself. Any claim for flood damage you may need to make continues to be made directly with your home insurance provider in the normal way – so you might not even know that Flood Re is there in the background, helping to keep the costs of your flood insurance more affordable.
Assessing the risks
Whether it is the home you already occupy or one that you are intending to buy, of course, you may want to know more about the risk of flooding and any potential impact on the cost of your home insurance.
To do so, simply visit the Environment Agency’s website to conduct a search of the areas which are vulnerable to risks of flooding from rivers or the sea, by entering your postcode and street number. The site then grades the risk to the identified property along a scale ranging from very low, to low, medium or high.
