Home insurance for home exchange

mapryan

I have an home exchange arranged with a Canadian family for a month and one of the things I obviously need to sort out is the home insurance. My present home insurer (Kwik-fit) called the underwriter (Axa) who say that are not willing to insure this "risk". So, Kwik-fit went to market and found a company who would, but they said they would have to cancel my current home insurance and take out a new policy with this other company. So, from my old policy (that cost £320-) I get £152 back, but the new policy is going to cost over £600-!

Has anyone done an overseas exchange like this before or have any experience of this kind of thing? I expected to pay extra but I didn't expect the policy to double

Thanks

Mike

InsideInsurance

I suspect you will find most ignore the issue and then if an incident happen "forget" to mention that strangers were living in the house at the time.

You could see if you could leave your home insurance in place, to avoid cancellation fees, and buy holiday home insurance for the period they are here and then cancel it but you are probably stretching the coverages for it.

Your best bet is to speak to a proper local broker (not Swinton)

mapryan

Thanks for the reply


I actually called LV as someone on the holiday exchange forum suggested and they suggested they are ok with covering this. They confirmed that they would cover the home exchange as long as:

1: You used a reputable agency to arrange the swap through

2: You are confident in the person you're exchanging with

3: No cash or expensive items are covered for the duration of the swap

So, LV it is 8-)

Cheers

InsideInsurance

mapryan wrote: »

1: You used a reputable agency to arrange the swap through

2: You are confident in the person you're exchanging with

I would certainly want exact definitions for the above two clauses as in their current wording they are exceptionally woolly and it is rare that an insurer would rely on such clauses. Particularly number 2, they would have no way to prove or disprove your confidence in the person even if they are a convicted felon whos spent more time in prison than out you could still claim you were confident in them.