Home Ins. and Loft Conversion with no planning permission - do I need to let insurers know?

Sandtree

williamgriffin said:

They don't ask, however lack of building regs maybe an issue in the event of any claim. 

For it to be a problem at claims stage it must be specified in the policy wording... any links to policy wordings you've seen that mention building regs?

lindabea

Sandtree said:

davidmcn said:

This is a red herring which comes up quite a lot - I don't see the need to chat to insurers about it (other than increasing the number of rooms, if they want to know that), as it tends to just cause confusion at the call centres. 

Its mainly because they have such poorly worded questions and guidance notes. Direct Line for example state:
Please tell us the number of bedrooms your property has. You should include all rooms originally designed for sleeping in, even if they are now used for another purpose, and any rooms that have been permanently converted for sleeping in.

What on earth does "permanently converted" even mean? If I have a 4 bed house with a study down stairs but as elderly mother cannot use the stairs too well these days we make the study down stairs into her bedroom when she visits and make the upstairs 3rd bedroom a study does that mean we have a 5 bed house according to DL as the new study was originally a bedroom and the downstairs is long term converted but only occasionally used?

Until insurers can word questions clearer its their own fault for calls to their call centre and at least if you put the answer they tell you to put they dont have comeback on you if they say your answer is wrong.
 
As said, you can take the prudent approach and just give the max possible answer but this is supposed to be a money saving site not the way to get the highest premiums possible.

I don't see any time when insurers will make questions clearer or indeed, their policy T&C.  Ambiguity is the insurance companies best friend;  the more ambiguity, the more scope they would have at their disposal to reject claims.   

Sandtree

lindabea said:

I don't see any time when insurers will make questions clearer or indeed, their policy T&C.  Ambiguity is the insurance companies best friend;  the more ambiguity, the more scope they would have at their disposal to reject claims.   

Not at all, if there is a reasonable alternative interpretation the FOS is likely to look favourably on a policyholder complaint. 

Lets be honest, 99% of people dont read their policy documents and so the cost of fighting complaints and the £500+ for going to the FOS would way outweigh the lost sales from the 1% that read the wording who decide not to buy because there are clearly worded exclusions.

The problem often stems from the fact that these things are done by evolution rather than revolution and worse than that, by committee. Its easy for unintended consequences to come into policy wordings or websites when continuous small tweaks are made and speed to market is critical. I've had several pieces of work to do over the years because some marketing promise was rushed through and gone live without due process and then its dark room/cold towel time to ensure the interpretation is correct and how to encode it in systems or business processes etc... at least once we've had to cover two interpretations as the wording was so loose we couldn't defend either being wrong.

Thrugelmir

Sandtree said:

lindabea said:

I don't see any time when insurers will make questions clearer or indeed, their policy T&C.  Ambiguity is the insurance companies best friend;  the more ambiguity, the more scope they would have at their disposal to reject claims.   

Not at all, if there is a reasonable alternative interpretation the FOS is likely to look favourably on a policyholder complaint. 

Lets be honest, 99% of people dont read their policy documents and so the cost of fighting complaints and the £500+ for going to the FOS would way outweigh the lost sales from the 1% that read the wording who decide not to buy because there are clearly worded exclusions.

When there's a claim the insurance company will take a keen interest. Ball is entirely in their court. No shortage of cowboy builders. Risk is all the policyholders. 

Sandtree

Thrugelmir said:

When there's a claim the insurance company will take a keen interest. Ball is entirely in their court. No shortage of cowboy builders. Risk is all the policyholders. 

Take a keen interest in what? The policy wordings? When you are talking in house claims handling for consumer insurance handlers are normally handling a portfolio of a couple of hundred claims and the variants of policy wordings those will span will be very small as legacy wordings are rarely persisted. 

Policy wordings form the minimum standard you can expect, having worked for a few clients who's main income is via white labeling it was possible for the end brand to pay more to have discretion applied... so if you were 11hrs 57 minutes late departing the policy wording would  say nothing due as its £X per complete 12 hours of delay but for those brands paying more we'd settle the claim as a guesture of goodwill. So terms were actively waived.

As to cowboy builders... if an insurer appoints their own builders, cowboy or otherwise, then the insurer is responsible for the standard of the work carried out. If the insurer instead asks for the policyholder to provide their own quotes and settles in cash then it is up to the policyholder to pick appropriate builders... or do the work themselves and pocket the money. 

Most complain when insurers try to promote their own repairers rather than allowing them free choice and so flies in the face of you thinking that policyholders selecting their own repairers is a bad thing