Moving insurance possible issue?

davetza

A friend a work mentioned that his brokers has advised him not to change home insurance to often as it was possible for your new insurance providor to turn around and say they were not going to pay out for an incident as the root cause of the incident happened before your policy with them started (eg subsidence).

Obviously this would depend on the T&C's but does anyone have any general comments on this?

howardtom4y

The broker may be correct, because you as the policy holder have to prove three things when every you submit a claim and this applies with whatever the claim and for any type of insurance.
you have to show that an insured event (ie damage to your house), by an insured peril (eg fire, flood, subsidence etc) has occurred during the term of the policy. With most perils it is fairly straight forward, however subsidence could be a bit more tricky. I believe that insurers are taking a much closer look at this type of claim and may only intervene when the problem is realy bad. If there were no problems that you were aware of until such times as you make the claim I would expect the onus to be on the insurer to prove when it occurred and then you could go back to that insurer.
Just remember that price of the premium is not the only consideration in chosing a policy. Be sure that the insurer will deal with you fairly if you do have a claim.

MarkyMarkD

It is a good point, and it doesn't depend on the Ts & Cs, it depends on your ability to prove when the incident which caused the loss occurred. This is very hard with subsidence and therefore it is a very good reason to stay with the same insurer - obviously unless the premium difference is huge. People who switch around every year to save say £10 or so might come to regret it.