How to cut the cost of your home insurance

If you are worried about future Home Insurance rises, here are a few tips which may help reduce your premiums.

Tip 1: Preparation – secure your home

Before renewing or buying home insurance ensure your home is, quite literally, safe and sound. Do this and you’ll arm yourself with ample evidence to persuade potential insurers you are a good bet.

If you have moved into a new home, change the locks because previous owners may have given copies of the keys to friends or family.

Fitting an alarm will also make you poular with insurers. You'll find some insurers may prefer specific alarm systems such as NACOSS standard alarm, which can cut premiums by up to 7.5 per cent with some policies. 

It's not just about warding off thieves which will help reduce your premium. Limiting the chance of problems before they happen will mean toy are less likely to make a claim and this will help reduce premiums in the future.

Make sure pipes are insulated. If that’s not possible, try to run the heating during cold spells for a short time (at least) every day to prevent frozen pipes.

It’s also worth checking for subsidence – something which ideally should be done when you purchase a property.

Moneysupermarket said you should continue to look out for this as it’s one of the most common problems to affect the home, and is usually covered by buildings insurance.

Fitting smoke alarms and following fire prevention advice is a must. Most insurers will now ask if you are a smoker as lit cigarettes are a potential hazard.

Tip 2: Switch to a new insurer

There are lots of statistics out there which illustrate the huge savings which can be made by simply moving your home insurance to a new insurer.

Make sure you find out what your current insurer is offering you to renew first. This will give you a figure on which to base your comparisons. 

Have expensive new technology or jewellery items received as Christmas or birthday gifts been added to the policy for example? Undervaluing the contents of your home could end up costing hundreds of pounds in the event the property was burgled or badly damaged by flooding or fire.

Tip 3: Consider combining your buildings and contents insurance

Some insurers will offer you a discount - often as big as 20 per cent or 25 per cent - for taking out both your buildings and contents insurance with them at the same time. 

Not only will this save you money, but it will also save on paperwork, admin and time. 

Before going ahead with this, however, make sure the saving you are getting for this combined insurance deal is bigger than any savings you might get buying contents and buildings cover separately elsewhere.

The AA’s most recent Shoparound index for home insurance premiums found while home insurance premiums had fallen by 1.1 per cent over the second quarter of 2011, combined buildings and contents policies had risen by 1.5 per cent.

Article taken from myfinances.co.uk by Kate Saines