Just a couple of weeks after upsetting the country’s motorists by reporting the biggest increases in car insurance for a decade, the AA have now decided to equal things up a little by telling those who take out household insurance that they are the next in line for a big shock. Of course for most of us it is a double whammy, the great majority of people in the UK have both car and home insurance.
It’s not fair either to blame the AA. They are just reporting the collated facts from their insurance index. According to them insurers are paying out nearly 25% more than they take in at the moment and though there is no reason to believe that fraudulent claims on home contents insurance is accelerating at the same rate as those in motor insurance, it obviously does have some bearing on the price of premiums today. No industry can sit back and take such high losses.
Do other countries pay so much for home insurance?
The UK insurance market is not alone in this. A report in the Republic of Ireland recently said that insurance brokers over there plan to increase home premiums by 15%, raise excess charges to as much as 1,000 Euros and offer less cover in the average policy. This at a time when the Republic’s finances are in melt down. The new budget measures imposed to bring the country away from the abyss of bankruptcy has reduced the income of virtually every home in the country and must leave many citizens wondering if they can go to the expense of purchasing cheap home insurance even if they can get it.
Switching back to the UK it is easy to see the predicament of insurance companies when the insurer’s national body estimates that at the moment insurance companies as a whole are paying out £7 million a day in claims for burst pipes relating back to the period before Christmas. Of course on top of that there have been floods and the usual surge in claims associated with the Christmas season.
Anything we can do?
It seems certain that price hikes in premiums are set to stay with us in the short term and consumers are well advised to look round and investigate what they can achieve in the way of discounts by checking home insurance comparison websites.
Tags: Cheap insurance, Home Insurance