Hiscox or Axa Home Plus?

pinkteapot

In terms of quality of claims service should the need arise, any views on whether Hiscox or Axa Home Plus are better?

Currently with Axa but the quotes are nigh on identical. I'm well aware of how good Hiscox's claims service is. Is Axa's meant to be as good? If it is we'll just renew with Axa but if Hiscox is better then for the same money we'll switch.

First year that Hiscox have been competitive for us; they've previously been far more expensive so we haven't bothered, but we're now up to a large sum insured under personal possessions with Axa (thanks to my hubby's nature photography hobby which means he takes valuable camera gear out a lot) and that's really adding £££ to our policy.

Quentin

Normally Hiscox would be considered better, but wonder how they are able to reduce their premium so much (hope not at the cost of their previous good service)

dacouch

Axa are not a patch on Hiscox for cover, claims or customer service (They struggle against most Insurers).

pinkteapot

Right, thanks then. Hiscox it is.

As I said, Hiscox haven't reduced their price (compared to quotes in previous years). Our insurance with Axa has got progressively more expensive due to the amount of optional personal possessions cover we now have (£15k). With Hiscox, this is included as standard under their worldwide all risks cover for contents (max 60 days per year).

Since posting, I have discovered two routes to a Hiscox discount. They do £60 cashback through mutualpoints.com which made them cheaper than Axa. I then spoke to my mum who is an underwriter at Hiscox* and she told me the website address to get staff friends and family discount. I did a quote on there and it's about the same as the normal online price less the £60 cashback. :money:

* You'll notice that I didn't believe her that they were the best company and still asked on here. She might have been biased. :rotfl:

dacouch

Use the staff friends and family discount rather than cashback

pinkteapot

I have done - I use Quidco but haven't used mutualpoints before and I know that cashback is at best slow and at worst not really guaranteed.

Thanks for the advice. At the same price I suspected it was worth switching to Hiscox. With them being cheaper, definitely worth it.

We have had to go up to a £500 excess. Axa and Hiscox were both about £450 with a £500 excess. My initial Axa renewal quote was £510 as we currently have a £100 excess. Hiscox went up to something ludicrous (about £690) when I changed the excess down to their lowest of £250. They obviously don't want people on low excesses.

Since neither of us has ever made an insurance claim and we can afford the £500 excess or to cover minor claims ourselves, we decided to raise the excess to save the money and will just use the insurance for major disasters. Hiscox friends and family price £383 (or the normal price would have effectively been about £390 after cashback). We only have their minimums of £170k buildings cover and £60k contents cover but the main issue for us is covering OH's camera gear outside the home for accidental damage.