Why did my Esure premium go up by 73%?

MCIBS

I currently have a 45% (10 years) No Claim Discount on my Buildings and Contents insurance policy with Esure. I do not live in an area where there has been recent flooding or any other kind of major incident.

In 2008 my premium was £172.26;
In 2009 it was £173.28;
This year Esure want a whopping £299.70

I've spoken to Customer Services at Esure but they have been unable to offer any sort of explanation for the huge increase (73% in one year) in my premium.

I've now arranged comparable cover through AXA for only £187.74 p.a. (with an Excess of £100 on routine claims).

Can anyone suggest what on earth is going on here? Are Esure trying to withdraw from offering Home Insurance by driving existing policy-holders away?

dunstonh

Can anyone suggest what on earth is going on here? Are Esure trying to withdraw from offering Home Insurance by driving existing policy-holders away?

Insurers are cherry picking more this year. Large increases are occurring on people in higher risk areas or what they perceive higher risk cases. Small increases or even reductions are occurring on low risk individuals.

mikey72

Was your policy on auto renew. Make sure they know it should lapse if it was.

tacotaco

Mine went from £470 to £716 without any policy change or making any claims. And car is now worth 10% less.
That's a 52% increase and a difference is £246. Too rich for me, so I went with a competitor which only charges 12% more but unfortunately no comprehensive. So I'm paying more for much, much less. What a rip-off insurance companies are! :mad:

lisyloo

There are two main reasons.

One is that insurers offer big discounts to new customers and in your second year this dissapears. This has gone on for donkeys years and the savvy MSE way to do things is to shop around every year. Loyalty definitely does not pay in insurance in general.

The second reasno is that prices have gone up across the board (more so for risky individuals less so for less risky individuals). There are a varierty of reasons for this - but mainly a lot of comapnies have been giving prices that are unsustainable.

dunstonh

Mine went from £470 to £716 without any policy change or making any claims. And car is now worth 10% less.

Your car may be worth 10% less but what happens if you hit a car that is say £80,000. Or you injure someone (which is where a substantial reason for the increase is) or kill them?

What a rip-off insurance companies are!

Yes. How dare they offer prices to you which run at a loss to them. Companies not making a profit from it are comlete rip offs !!!

Rather than blame the insurance companies, why not blame the compensation culture scumbags?

Running_On_Empty

MCIBS wrote: »

I currently have a 45% (10 years) No Claim Discount on my Buildings and Contents insurance policy with Esure. I do not live in an area where there has been recent flooding or any other kind of major incident.

In 2008 my premium was £172.26;
In 2009 it was £173.28;
This year Esure want a whopping £299.70

I've spoken to Customer Services at Esure but they have been unable to offer any sort of explanation for the huge increase (73% in one year) in my premium.

I've now arranged comparable cover through AXA for only £187.74 p.a. (with an Excess of £100 on routine claims).

Can anyone suggest what on earth is going on here? Are Esure trying to withdraw from offering Home Insurance by driving existing policy-holders away?

Have you recently passed a big birthday?

huckster

The OP has posted to another site, saying that he has been with Esure for years and only this year has the premium suddenly increased.

Age could be the reason, but seems a big increase if he has hit a milestone age. Would have thought that premiums would have started to increase beforehand.

OP has written to Esure for an explanation. The change in Esures ownership could be a reason, if they have had new rates applied.

lisyloo

Perhaps they don't want his business for whatever reason.

Like a lot of businesses insurers won't turn many people down, but they will offer lower prices to the customers they want and higher prices for those they don't particularly want.
The profile of target customers can change depending on events perhaps completely unrelated to the individual e.g. postcode area has a lot of claims last year.

mikey72

lisyloo wrote: »

There are two main reasons.

One is that insurers offer big discounts to new customers and in your second year this dissapears. This has gone on for donkeys years and the savvy MSE way to do things is to shop around every year. Loyalty definitely does not pay in insurance in general.......

MCIBS wrote: »

In 2008 my premium was £172.26;
In 2009 it was £173.28;
This year Esure want a whopping £299.70

Kind of shows the "first year discount" up as another trite excuse rolled out every time the insurance companies hike the prices up.
They increase it hoping you won't notice, and then hope they can autorenew before you realise, then hit you with a nassive cancellation fee.
But I do agree, loyalty has no place in insurance nowadays.

*Scarlett

As lisyloo says it's probably not related to your individual circumstances and I would have thought that in most cases for home insurance the premium would not increase purely for the fact that you are another year older for a standard cover with no recent claims.

The insurer has possibly had a lot of claims in your area in the last 12 months and has assessed the risk as higher so have imposed a higher premium.

I have recently helped a relative to move their policy as the renewal went up from about £15 per month to £22 with no claims or changes in circumstances. When I rang to lapse the policy they did offer to reduce to to about £17.50 but we had found comparable cover elsewhere at just over £15.

You have obviously done the right thing by shopping around to find a better value policy and it never does any harm to do this each year to make sure you have the best deal.