Advice needed with lapsed building insurance policy please

Growlybear

I wondered if anyone could please give me some advice regarding my building insurance policy please?

To my horror, I have just found out that our policy has lapsed. It seems that my husband, who pays the premium annually, thought that it automatically renewed, and hadn't checked his bank account to make sure that the payment had gone through. It looks as though the policy lapsed in December 2014, so we have been unknowingly uninsured for some time now. We don't have a mortgage and so haven't contravened any lender conditions. He says that he doesn't believe he received any correspondence from insurance company when the policy was last due for renewal, and once it had lapsed, he obviously wouldn't have had any communication last December.


Whenever I've sought quotes for buildings insurance over the years, because of previous subsidence, other insurers have either not been prepared to insure us or have given us exorbitant quotes, or excluded subsidence. We have only just discovered that the policy has lapsed, and the insurance company is now closed. Before I ring them tomorrow, can anyone advise me please whether there is any obligation on the insurers to reinstate our policy (with or without payment of the premiums since December 2014)? If so, would they also be obliged to give us the same cover as before, and not exclude subsidence? Any other suggestions (apart from divorcing my husband for his stupidity!) would be very welcome.

dacouch

Unfortunately you have next to zero chance of getting the Insurer to reinstate cover.

There was only a small chance of getting cover with them if the house was showing no signs of movement, but with the signs of moving again they are highly unlikely to be prepared to expose themselves to a large claim.

There are specialist Insurers who will offer cover, but will want to exclude subsidence.

However if the previous policy was genuinely on an auto renew and the Insurer did not process the auto renewal correctly, you may have a small chance of arguing it's their fault the policy lapsed. (This may be made more difficult if the card you used to pay had expired at the time of the renewal two years ago).

Have you looked at previous renewals to see if they were on auto renew

Growlybear

Thank you for replying so quickly. It looks like this will be an expensive mistake.


My husband is fairly sure that the policy was automatically renewed by direct debit in the past, and is checking back through previous renewals to see whether this was definitely the case.

paddyandstumpy

You need to contact the insurer from back in the day and ask why the policy ceased. They'll very quickly find out if you were on an auto renewal.

Unless you can prove they made a mistake, it looks like you'll have to swallow this one.

Even if they should have renewed it and didn't; they could argue you should have noticed over the last two years that you haven't paid premiums. I wouldn't bet on getting that policy reinstated.

Growlybear

We will contact the previous insurer first thing in the morning. I'm a bit shocked that my husband hasn't noticed that he hadn't paid the premium for two years, but he is really disorganised and is very shocked that he didn't realise. I'm not expecting that they will reinstate the policy but we can at least try

teddysmum

They could have sent a renewal notice that went astray. In wet weather, we have received neighbours' mail, because the dampness stuck the envelope to the bottom of our pile.