Buildings Insurance - within 400 metres (just) of water course

Suzy_M

We’re in the very early stages of shopping around for building insurance. On paper the house is within 400 metres (just) of a water course, however it is 23 metres above it.


There’s a very low probability of flooding damage from the water course and no history of flooding. - It’s one of those situations where if someone can read an Ordnance survey map common sense should prevail.


What sort of difference does this measurement make to the cost of an insurance policy and is it worth getting / will we need an individual flood risk assessment.

InsideInsurance

It will depend on the insurer, some will use basic information like this, others will use the floodplains zoning etc and not the answer to this question

ACG

I have known insurers to accept a photograph of a house at the top of a hill to show that there is no chance of it flooding.

Im not sure if all insurers will do this but it might be worth speaking to an insurance broker (from what i can gather swinton should be avoided - although i have no personal experience good or bad with them).

thenudeone

There is no easy way around it except to trawl through the (often well hidden) assumptions and small print of each insurance company. As long as the property has never been flooded, that's good enough for many insurers.

I'm in a similar situation, and whilst some insurers automatically rule out my location, it's still possible to get a decent quote with a bit of legwork.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

It is another of those unfit for purpose provisos which is becoming the norm.

The practice blacklists such a disproportionate number of properties e.g. in the Thames Flood Area (including all the blocks of flats the government is allowing to be built) that I am wondering if it breaks some law either directly (by unreasonable discrimination) or indirectly (because theoretically if you get turned down by an insurer, you then have to declare the declinature to another!)

Suzy_M

Thank you all for your replies, to answer

TurnUpForTheBooks
Getting turned down by an insurer, and any consequential complications, is my main concern at the moment

Inside Insurance
I’m considering getting an Insurance Related Request letter from the Environment Agency so I have something official to shove under their noses.

ACG
Because of this distance question it looks as though online comparison sites will be unsuitable so off to find a local broker.
(Had the same independent broker for years until they retired and Swinton took them over. Have got fed up with chasing them for their repeated mistakes and not sending amended documents etc. etc.)

The nude one (not in this weather I hope!)
As you say no easy way round it so legwork round the brokers rather than trawling the internet.

TurnUpForTheBooks
‘unfit for purpose provisos’ is spot on - Looking at the surrounding area for this house to flood it would need a 30 metre high dam at least one mile long across the valley floor or a flood of such biblical proportions that the whole area would be wiped out!

Note: I can make light of my situation but my thoughts do go out to all those affected by the current flooding and weather conditions.

dauphin

I think you're over-estimating the problem. My house is about 30 metres from a tidal loch (but doesn't get flooded or anything close) and I have never experienced any difficulty when shopping around for cover. Plenty of insurers do not have a rigid rule about distance from a watercourse. Just go to the usual online comparison sites, use them to select potential insurers, then carefully check those insurers' acceptance criteria for yourself.
I'm currently with John Lewis and they only stipulate that the house and land have not flooded in the last 5 years. I always shop around and just don't find proximity to water to be a major issue.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Nope dauphin, the problem is not underestimated. It is unfortunately now a commonly found criterion but you may have to go hunting to find it behind your quote/cover. It may be in the questions you are asked before you finally buy the cover, or it may be in the policy wording, or it may with some insurers (as I recall was exactly the case for me last year) that it appears only in the hardcopy part-prefilled questionnaire that arrives for you to sign and return or simply note as the basis of the contract when you have already gone some way towards accepting the cover. I can remember that I made a fuss when I discovered it as it was terribly misleading and unfair on ordinary punters. Actually I remember now that it was a broker I had to take to task over it! In my case I was just outside 400m from a river but inside 400m from a man made hole that could potentially flood. They then made representations directly to the underwriter but the underwriter would not relent so "the broker's indication" was put aside and "no quote was formalised."

I had stumbled upon the broker completely by mistake a little earlier in relation to some motor insurance renewal arranged via a scheme which I wished to negotiate. I had saynoto0870'd the telephone number of my existing scheme broker and inadvertently called their biggest competitor with a similar name! The lucky new broker did take over the motor cover, but after having done a lot of work too to tailor the rest of my household contents cover into a great package, he embarassingly had to back out of covering contents exactly because of this latent 400m problem.

It is probably caused by recent stipulations by those ever so clever reinsurers who spend so much on weather and climate change prediction to cover their a$$es and leave ours hanging in the breeze.

It is an unfair practice and should be outlawed by FCA. Are you reading this FCA?

dauphin

I can only speak from my own experience. Over the past 3 years I have had insurance with Hiscox, M&S and John Lewis. I don't believe any of these involved the pitfall you have described and I do look at these things carefully.
The behaviour described does sound unfair and misleading and I'd be genuinely interested in knowing the details. It sounds as if it might be down to the broker's error.
However, that doesn't mean that it will necessarily be difficult for the OP to find suitable cover with insurers who don't go in for kind of tricky practice described. She could do worse than have a look at the three insurers I've mentioned, though I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Well keep looking carefully, dauphin. Wordings and company managements change all too rapidly.

Hiscox has a strong reputation as a top people's insurer so I would be surprised if they started being less than transparent.

M&S policies are AXA policies and nothing AXA does would ever surprise me. The M&S executive responsible for placing that scheme with AXA will need to be very well chosen in order to continue to protect M&S reputation.

I haven't looked at John Lewis but one might hope that they too know they have a reputation to protect which may not be automatically maintained by any insurance scheme provider.

This is the problem. Very few insurance market players have reputations to protect. The whole industry with very very few exceptions trades on something else entirely now including the reputations of others.

And when you get a bank using their brand to market an insurance product with a particular insurer, then be doubly careful. Neither has a reputation to protect and you may expect instant abdication of aftersales service by the bank - you are instantly shoved down a telephone line to the insurer and trying to get the bank to support you in any dispute is completely hopeless.

dauphin

But to get back to the questions posed by the OP, the location of her property is unlikely to involve a cost penalty with many insurers, nor will she need an individual flood risk assessment.
I would be interested to learn of any online insurer which seeks to impose flood risk restrictions which are not mentioned in either the quotation assumptions or in the online proposal form.