After subsidence, insurer no longer offers subsidence cover - WHAT TO DO?

Gerbert

"You can't expect a new insurer to sign up immediately for what could be an expensive claim can you?"

Naively - but I still don't understand why this is naive - I supposed that an insurer would be able and even willing to do this if they suitably increased the premium and excess to compensate for the increased risk. (We are talking about cover for a new incident, not the ongoing one after all) But I have had blanket refusal wherever I have tried.

dacouch

Why did you not stay with the original Insurer who paid the original subsidence claim or was that Aegis?

If it was Aegis and you were my customer and as a broker we lost our agency with Aegis I would have advised you to either do a transfer of agency of your existing Aegis policy to a broker who deals with them or to a broker who can offer a new Aegis policy suitably cross referenced with the old policy.

I would not have transfered you to a new Insurer as it can potentially cause problems as you have discovered.

Weird how the broker has said the "Underwriter" has not changed and the product remains the same. When clearly it is a new underwriter

Gerbert

"Why did you not stay with the original Insurer who paid the original subsidence claim or was that Aegis?"

Yes, it is Ageas who are covering the ongoing claim. It looks like I should have tried to stay with them two years ago and dropped the broker instead.

Mrs_pbradley936

We had our house monitored by the NHBC for a couple of years. It was less than 10 years old at the time. The house and garden wall across the road had developed cracks. The house needed underpinning and the wall was knocked down then rebuilt. We got a letter (so did a few neighbours) asking if they could dig holes in the garden, stick pins in the walls and come back every so often. All this was after the dry summer of 2003. Anyway we did not need anything done but they told us to keep the bushes and trees cut back really hard.

We did ask if we had to declare this if we sold and were told no because no structural work was necessary and that we were part of a survey for the immediate area of a known problem not a remedy for a problem to our house.

We had men digging holes in the garden, surveyors, structural engineers, insurance assessors you name it they turned up. Some from the NHBC others from Norwich Union and still others from Cunningham and Lindsey no idea who they were but I had got used to picking up the phone and saying “Yes of course you can come and look at my house, you need access to the garden too? Yes that will be fine.”

They came back every so many months to take measurements. What did they do? Nothing! Said it was all due to the long hot summer we had enjoyed in I think 2003 and that trees were looking for moisture and – well to be honest it all went over my head but now we must not let any trees or bushes within so far of the house get above about six feet tall.