Contents Insurance Minefield!

DrowninginDebt

My current provider, the Post Office, has doubled my instalments, blaming 'market trends' so I am comparing quotes but am alarmed to find that "Accidental" cover is usually extra (about £40) when I assumed insurance policies covered for this, and also theft, so why is it an extra charge?
Also, one quote required details of an IVA, taken out in 2011 but paid off early - why do they require this level of my financial dealings?

Aretnap

Higher end (ie more expensive) policies often cover accidental damage as standard, but with basic policies it tends to be an added extra. If you see insurance as being primarily to cover catastrophic events (ie losing most or all of your posessions, rather than a single broken item of preoperty) then arguably it's not an essential. Things like fire, floods and even theft could result in you losing many thousands of pounds worth of posessions, but there are very few ways in which an accident cab cause that much damage, especially if you don't have very expensive individual items.

(Of course you could do something like start a fire accidentally, but that would still be covered under the fire section even if you didn't have accidental damage cover. The cover is for accidents which are not covered by other sections of your policy, eg dropping things or spilling drinks on your laptop).