Home Insurance Premium Shot Up 3x - Suddenly My Postcode is a Subsidence Risk?? 17 March at 3:02PM in Insurance & life assurance 3 replies 80 views

MonsieurT

Hello All.

My home and contents insurance with esure has gone from around £300 to £1000. Very nearly 50 years living at this address and suddenly, for the first time, we're a subsidence risk!

What could this all be about? I understand there needs to be more than one property making a claim within a given period for the postcode to be flagged as a risk. Never seen any evidence of subsidence in the area. Not a clay-y ground, the trees on the other side of the street were all felled a few years ago due to disease (or so we were told) and the trees on the garden side (in this row of Victorian terraces) have been here forever.

What could be going on? Could it be an error? This is nuts.

DullGreyGuy

Could be an error, insurers buy their risk maps from various organisations and then layer on top their own experience. 

You mention eSure is now £1k but have you shopped around? Many use similar data sources but each insurers own experience is unique so if universally prices have tripled then you are more looking at someone like the Coal Board having now advised historic mining happened in the area when previously not thought so or RMS having updated their model and marked the area as high risk. 

dunstonh

My home and contents insurance with esure has gone from around £300 to £1000. Very nearly 50 years living at this address and suddenly, for the first time, we're a subsidence risk!

How do you know that you are a subsidence risk?    More often than not it is movement risk (especially after a drought year which has seen claims due to movement increase significantly)

huckster

The Insurance company don't want to Insure as many houses in that area, so don't really want you to stay with them, so they have increased premium to make you shop around.

Insurance premiums have increased quite a lot, but to treble the amount suggests they don't want your business.