Home Insurance 2011

Our home insurance - buildings and contents - is up for renewal at the end of September.  I follow an approach similar to MoneySavingExpert's advice to getting good value.

In previous year's I've found it cheaper to get the buildings part separate to the contents part because that gives 2 lots of cashback.  But this year all the companies seem to have sensibly offered half the cashback amount for one component of insurance so unless the quotes themselves worked out better individually then combined is just as good.

I started with Confused.com and added the top few quotes to a google spreadsheet, recording: Name, Total Price, Cashback amount, Excess, Legal Cover, and Other Notes.

Chepeast at Confused.com was Kwikfit at £131.92 with esure close behind at £132.50  The esure quote included Legal Cover and Home Emergency cover.

Then I moved on to GoCompare, who had esure top of their list with the exact same price quote. A quick check on topcashback.com showed that £45.45 cashback for esure.

I tried quoting for buildings and contents individually but the best overall price was £139 and didn't have as much cashback.

So far I'd been quoting for contents without accidental damage cover. I reran the combined quote at GoCompare and the price for esure did not change - £132.50 including accidental damage.  Most other quotes went up by at least £30.

Then I tried changing the excess for each component.  Reducing the excess on the buildings part made the price go up, increasing the excess did not reduce the price.  But for the contents part, reducing the excess did not change the quote from esure - sweet.

I went through topcashback.com to esure and got a direct quote. Initially it came out at a higher amount but after reviewing the options that it had chosen I was able to replicate the £132.50 quote.  I found that I could reduce the voluntary contents excess down to 0 without affecting the quote (£100 mandatory excess).

I also played around with the sum insured for contents. It started covering £22000.  Up to £44500, the quote didn't change, beyond that it did.

So I clicked Buy, finished the paperwork, and I can see that it's tracked correctly on topcashback.com.

Net price: £132.50 - £45.45 = £86.55 for unlimited buildings cover with £350 total excess and £44500 contents cover with £100 excess including accidental damage, Legal Cover and Home Emergency

So not as good as a couple of years back, where the contents part was paying me for cover and the buildings part was net £20 or so, but pretty good value.