Flat roof house insurance warning

Carol2000

My house has a flat roof covered with EPDM, fairly new and in good condition. Today I used a comparison site to find a new quotation for house insurance and found one on Intelligent Insurance. I was directed through to the website, checked as many details as I could see and found the roof listed correctly as 100% flat roof but I was not asked further questions about this. I bought the policy. An email arrived and, on checking the Statement of Fact, discovered it was now listed as 100% Asphalt. At no time had I written this or seen it. I went back online to change it through the online chat. This added a further £150 to my policy. Why is EPDM so much worse than Asphalt? Why did Intelligent Insurance come out top on a couple of comparison sites if the original information which I supplied to the comparison site is not then used to give an accurate quotation? I was told that I could have changed these details before buying but I had not seen any option to do this, nor seen the word 'asphalt' mentioned at all. I cancelled the policy and was then charged £35. So, £35 for something I had not chosen, had had for 10 mins and wasn't due to come into effect anyway for another 3 weeks. I have gone back to Aviva, slightly more expensive but in this case at least i know what is covered.

Sandtree

Problem with trying to get quotes from 100 companies at the same time is that they all have different questions and options in drop downs. When insurers or intermediaries quote they have to do so using certain mappings and assumptions... so "where is your car kept over night?" and the person selects "public carpark" but an insurer only offers Garage, Drive or Road then a mapping has to be done.

This is why the aggregators stress that when you click through from their site to the insurer/brokers you must check that each and every answer is correct because if confused.com doesnt ask roof construction whereas Towergate differentiate between materials they'll have to chose the most common option so for pitched roof tiles/slates and flat roof asphalt. 

Carol2000

Yes, but I had gone through confused.com and correctly put 'Other' rather than 'Asphalt' (I've gone back to my account to check this).. I have had a reply from Intelligent Insurance (who have investigated) that putting 'Other' means I would have been mapped as EPDM so I still can't see how this happened. Nor do I understand why EPDM should cost £150 more! So my advice is to ring the company directly, even after a comparison site search, just to make sure. Luckily I haggled with my current provider and managed to get a discount but I've still lost money this year.

jimbo6977

There are 3 certainties in life:
1. Death
2. Taxes
3. Flat roofs leak

Carol2000

Too true! I can understand a flat roof costing more to insure than an ordinary one (though in my experience tiles fall off too) but why £150 more to insure flat EPDM than flat asphalt?

Sandtree

Carol2000 said:

but why £150 more to insure flat EPDM than flat asphalt?

Because that insurer has found that their claims experience is worse. That could be that they leak more often or that they are more expensive to fix when they do leak or that people with EPDM roofs generally have more valuable contents and so the total claims cost for a leak is higher.... mass market consumer insurance is based on statistical analysis of experience rather than people sitting in a room speculating over what is better quality or more risky etc