Home insurance with floods covered? gocompare site does not have option

now3d

Hello

I live in my own home 90 Metres from dry-ish stream, and 400 Metres from the Thames. Canvassing opinion, is it worth getting the flood cover? Last flood was in 1949 I think. Since then Jubeliee river defences have been built.

My second problem is that gocompare don't have an option for flood cover, so when I phone up the companies to confirm the quote.. they say they can't cover for flooding!

Existing policy with American Express was £280 for buildings and 10k contents cover with flooding covered. This rocketed to £370 on the renewal letter.

I'm a little miffed with gocompare, "QuoteYourHome" and "aim4agreatquote" both came in around £171. I selected upfront payment. However when I clicked through the links, both companies would only process as monthly payments, bumping the total paid up to £220!

-- why does gocompare allow this?

Thanks for any tips
rich

InsideInsurance

With standard home insurance flood is covered as a peril as standard and an endorsement has to be applied to the policy to exclude cover.

Aggregators, and in general insurance websites in general, deal with the mass market as analysis has shown that for every additional question/ step you make people go through you lose X% of people. You therefore have to balance the needs of the Y% of people who have flood issues with the X% of non-flood issue customers and work out if its better to ask the additional question(s) needed or not.

Generally, do a quotes on the aggregators and/ or those that don't play on the aggregators "ignoring" the sticking point and then phone through to the insurers that come top of the list and deal with the sticking points. I have to do the same with my car insurance as it is a lease car and many insurers on the aggregators decline to quote but if you call them they are happy to as long as the lease is over 12 months. Obviously check the paperwork carefully when it turns up to ensure the telephone agent corrected the details.

now3d

Thanks for the reply /insideInsurance/.

I found something else out when I spoke with the top insurance from gocompare aggregation today. AS I'm self-employed I have my ltd co registered at my home address, and do a bit of book keeping, invoicing from home.. that means I'm using the home for "business clerical" use.

Based on that, they said they could not cover for my combination of:

Stream (but dry atm) 70m from house. Visible on OS map
River 380m from house.
Business use (admin clerical).

Looks like this is going to be a hard find..

I don't mind excluding the dry stream, but the river I would like to cover.

InsideInsurance

You are not self employed if you are running an LTD but are a director of the company instead.

You will need to include clerical cover but the vast majority of insurers will have no issues with this. I have been in the same boat for years on that front and never once had a problem I have to say.

now3d

Thanks. I put down Director of Ltd. Got the company admin/clerical cover.

I gave up on Flood, and subsidence cover (neighbours tree 4 metres from house). At least got Fire cover, that was my main thing I needed.

One broker said the whole suburb could not get flood cover because of proximity to stream and river.

InsideInsurance

If you have a mortgage you should check that not having these covers is going to be acceptable to them