landlord insurance - flood risk issue

Sandtree

Annemos said:

If we are not in the Industry and don't have the knowledge, just how do we find a Broker for a certain set of conditions?  E.g. the Poster's circumstances here.

Are there specialised brokers for certain areas of insurance? 

The sale of insurance falls into one of two camps - advised or non-advised.

Non-advised is what you get when you go on confused.com get a 100 quotes and decide which one to buy. The seller can only present options and its your responsibility to decide if the policy is appropriate for you, if you need breakdown cover or not etc.

Advised sales they can make recommendations to you but to prove that they are recommending based on your needs and not who pays the better commission there is a lot more paperwork and evidence needed. Staff also need more training to be able to give the recommendations rather than just reading the options off of the screen. All of this adds costs and this ultimately has to be paid for.

Brokers also fall into one of two other camps... some act as a pseudo insurer (hence we get people here confused over who their insurer is) and have standard terms and a panel of insurers that quote on those terms (in these setups they'll almost always call them the "underwriter" rather than insurer). This means each quote is identical other than the price. Others use insurers standard wordings etc and so each quote not only has different prices but different terms.

Like all industries there are good and better examples, some will specialise intentionally eg modified cars and others somewhat fall into a certain level of specialism because brokers were traditionally local and if you are in a high flood area you'll be used to dealing with lots of policy enquiries for risk flood.,, similarly a broker in the centre of Manchester is unlikely to get many walk ins asking for crop insurance or other agricultural coverages.

The problem with mass market consumer insurance is that its a commoditized distress purchase... you dont find people bragging about the fact they've saved up and finally afforded a Hiscox Home insurance unlike a Chanel handback or Jimmy Choo shoes. People want low friction purchase at the minimum price so welcome in the aggregators like confused.com and wave goodbye to the advisory broker who's cost of sale would be massively higher than any commission received (in fact many non-advisory sales of car insurance will be done at a loss and its the APR for installments, the admin fee for amendments and the referrals to credit hire in non-fault accidents that actually make it profitable).

For the OP the recommendation would be to shop around including the direct players who dont go through brokers etc but to also speak to a local broker or two who'll be used to placing business based on the local issues with flooding

Annemos

Many thanks, Sandtree. Your explanations are always superb. 

eastmidsaver

thanks.   will pass this advice on.