Buildings and Contents Insurance

DoneWorking

I have been told Admiral offer good rates for home insurance
What are they like for service

I obtained a quote 
They didn't ask for too much info
IE on how many bed rooms etc 

Is this ok
I'm assuming they base their rates on statistics and info for your area 

tacpot12

I don't have any recent experince of Admiral, but in terms of service the only thing you really need is to be certain that they will pay up promptly if you need to claim. Have a google about problems people may have had claiming from Admiral's Home Insurance. Just be aware that people that have had problems shout a lot louder than people who have not. 

Other things to check are the amount of cover for rebuilding, accidental damage and Legal Expenses. Rebuilding costs have gone up alot in the past three years as a result of Brexit and inflation. Accidental Damage cover is available for buildings and for contents seperately and most people need neither. It's enerally cheaper to insure yourself against accidental damage, unless you are family with young children, then accidental damage for the building can be worthwhile.  Given the number of times I recommend on the MSE forum using the Legal Expense insurance, I have to say that this is always worth buying (assuming the premium is sensible).  

Annemos

Good evening tacpot12. I was just reading your comment about Accidental damage. Whether it might or might not be necessary. 


In the policy I have:  Accidental damage is "Damage or loss of function caused by a sudden, unforeseen and unintentional event."   The Accidental Damage also says  "it will not cover damage caused by water entering the home, unless it is caused by flood or storm."

The regular part of the policy insures against "damage or loss caused by storm or flood". BUT a storm is only a storm if it has persistent winds over 55mph. 

So supposing the storm was only 50mph. 

Am I right in thinking that if you did not have Accidental Damage cover, then you would not be covered for any wind damage at all? (Say for the roof and contents.) But if you do have Accidental Damage Cover, then it will be covered?


(I find interpreting policies a nightmare: they are all subtly different. Often it seems quite hard to know what the intent is?) 

DullGreyGuy

DoneWorking said:

I have been told Admiral offer good rates for home insurance
What are they like for service

I obtained a quote 
They didn't ask for too much info
IE on how many bed rooms etc 

Is this ok
I'm assuming they base their rates on statistics and info for your area 

Home insurance can be "sum insured" or "Bedroom rated"... so if they are sum insured based and you declare the rebuild cost of your home is £400,000 it doesn't matter a jot if that's 1, 3 or 20 bedrooms.

Admiral are a cheap and cheerful insurer when it comes to motor and have to say I was generally happy with their no frills cover. Their Home insurance however is not written in the UK, which in itself to me is a worry, but also my car was worth £8,000 and paying third party claims is a statutory requirement for them. My home is worth a lot more than £8k and there is no statutory element. 

tacpot12

Annemos said:

Good evening tacpot12. I was just reading your comment about Accidental damage. Whether it might or might not be necessary. 


In the policy I have:  Accidental damage is "Damage or loss of function caused by a sudden, unforeseen and unintentional event."   The Accidental Damage also says  "it will not cover damage caused by water entering the home, unless it is caused by flood or storm."

The regular part of the policy insures against "damage or loss caused by storm or flood". BUT a storm is only a storm if it has persistent winds over 55mph. 

So supposing the storm was only 50mph. 

Am I right in thinking that if you did not have Accidental Damage cover, then you would not be covered for any wind damage at all? (Say for the roof and contents.) But if you do have Accidental Damage Cover, then it will be covered?


(I find interpreting policies a nightmare: they are all subtly different. Often it seems quite hard to know what the intent is?) 

I agree it can be quite hard to interpret policy wording.

I think the definition of a storm will apply to both the main building cover and the additional accidental damage cover, i.e. the winds have to persistent be above 55mph. (As an aside, this is how the Beaufort scale defines 'Storm' winds). But if your property is in good condition, lower winds should, at most, create only very light damage, e.g. dislodging a few tiles. So it seems that in this case the damage caused by water getting in during the storm would not be covered. You would have to ask the insurer to clarify this, and I would ask for the answer to be emailed to you so that if you ever needed to claim, you could prove what you were told.

Annemos

Yes tacpot12, I agree with you. Apparently, water getting in via a storm would not be covered, it seems, by either the main policy or the Accidental Damage part of the policy, if the winds were less than 55mph. 

However, although the main part of the policy also implies that wind damage would only be covered for winds at or over 55mph.....

......the optional accidental damage cover, just says "Damage or loss of function caused by a sudden, unforeseen and unintentional event" (with just the exclusion for water unless "at and over 55 mph winds" or a flood). So it does seems to allow wind damage at less that 55mph, if the roof is in good condition, under the accidental damage part. 

So you do seem to have a bit more leeway there for roof damage, if you took out the optional Accidental Damage part. 

To be honest, this is not easy wording for the policyholder and this is a very well-known policy!  


What made me notice this is something the FOS says about storm damage...... towards the end of this, it discusses possibly being able to claim under other cover, such as the Accidental Damage section. One can click into the Accidental Damage explanation, too. 


https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/businesses/complaints-deal/insurance/home-buildings-insurance/storm-damage


Dullgreyguy..... Is there normally an ordering process done within Insurance? For example, Winds of only 50 mph cause part of the roof to blow off which causes the rain to get in. Under the Accidental damage wording above, can that just be looked at as purely having arisen from wind damage, because that was the first cause of damage?? Or would that water exclusion above also get combined to throw the water damage out? 


Thank you so much for your help tacpot12 and DGG.

Perhaps the OP is looking closely at policy wording, too, in the light of such issues. It is not just the price, or the customer service, it is also the obscurities in the policy wording that can bite you!  

DullGreyGuy

Annemos said:

Dullgreyguy..... Is there normally an ordering process done within Insurance? For example, Winds of only 50 mph cause part of the roof to blow off which causes the rain to get in. Under the Accidental damage wording above, can that just be looked at as purely having arisen from wind damage, because that was the first cause of damage?? Or would that water exclusion above also get combined to throw the water damage out? 

Google proximate cause if you are having a bit of a dull day.

My current client had a recent one on a policy that excludes damage by mould. Floods took out power, power out meant the dehumidifiers stopped working and factory closed, no dehumidifiers meant significant mould growth. Is the cause of the damage flood, electrical supply or mould? They decided to settle the claim.

The devil is in the detail and so to comment on an individual policy I'd really need to see the exact wording inc any emphasis.

Annemos

Well, DGG. I was having a VERY dull day, cleaning my soffits, guttering, frames and windows, ready for the Coronation weekend!

Gosh....

Just looked at proximate cause and found this   (Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Society of Legal Scholars):   proximate cause = something that is considered to be the direct cause of damage, loss, or injury

From the perspective of liability, the risks in insurance can be classified under insured risk, excluded risk and uninsured risk in an insurance contract. Insured risk refers to the risk covered by the insurance contract. The insurance covers loss of the subject matter insured attributable to or caused by specified risk in the contract. Excluded risk refers to risks that the insurance does not cover. The insurance will in no case cover loss, damage or expense caused by an excluded risk. A loss or damage might be caused by a risk which is neither covered nor excluded by an insurance contract. This kind of risk could be called an uninsured risk.

Those kinds of risks may proximately cause a loss successively or simultaneously. They are called the concurrent causes. It is also called combination of causes: the combination of more than one cause which together made a loss inevitable. Neither would have caused the loss without the other.


Where the risks successively caused a loss, the English courts identify one of the risks as the proximate cause which is the dominant, effective or operative cause of the loss. Where the risks simultaneously caused a loss, the English courts also identify one proximate cause, but open the question of the insurer's liability with more than one proximate cause. It has been established in English common law that the insurer is not liable for a loss concurrently caused by more than one proximate cause, one of which is an insured risk and the other an excluded risk. The insurer is liable for a loss under concurrent causation where one proximate cause is an insured risk and the other is an uninsured risk.

===================================================================

The policy wording is here: Gold/Silver/Bronze.

https://www.johnlewisfinance.com/insurance/home-insurance.html#PolicyWording


Here is my go at my example under the Accidental Damage Section for Buildings and for Contents (Section 1). Assume Insurance Company had contacted their weather observations company and they say the wind was only 50 mph. Roof is in good condition. 

So, the wind blows a section of roof tiling off (roof damage) and the rain gets in and damages the loft insulation, ceiling (part falls in), plasterboard wall, wiring, the carpet, sofa and expensive TV! 


Accidental damage : Damage or loss of function caused by a sudden, unforeseen and unintentional event. 

(How odd.....I just noticed they forgot? to highlight the words "storm, flood, home" in the AD part for buildings, but they did remember to do it for AD Contents. An oversight??  Oh..... and is this also of any importance?.....the AD Buildings Section1 says "caused by"   but the AD Contents Section1 says "that arises from".    Are they trying to catch us homeowners out in some way?) 


a) I think the insurer is liable to fix the roof damage, because there is NO exclusion for damage caused by wind in that AD Buildings Section 1 part of the policy. 

b) But the water damage.  I think we do have TWO concurrent causes, the wind AND the rain. (If no wind, rain would not have got in to cause water damage. If no rain, stuff would not have been water-damaged.)  

If those causes are considered successive:   The wind took the tiles off first. That then allowed the rain to get in. So, can we say the wind was the main dominant cause?  And therefore the Insurance Company is liable to pay up (There is no exclusion for damage caused by wind in the AD section 1.)

BUT (I bet it's this!!)   if we have to say the causes are simultaneous, then we have TWO proximate causes, the wind AND the rain happening at the same time! Since the damage caused by one of those causes.... the water entering.... is EXCLUDED, because the storm was not a storm (winds too low).... so then the insurance company is NOT liable for any of the actual water damage. 



It's a bit devious if the latter solution (simultaneous) is indeed the case. Roof damage is fixed under the Accidental Damage part (which you do pay extra for), but the rain damage isn't!  Very unexpected, really, in a policy. 

How on earth are we homeowners supposed to work all this out? And I am not even confident the Claims Handler would always know how to do this properly. They have to deal with so many variations in policies. 

Over to DGG who is my professor, for his analysis of this policy. Many MANY thanks for your time and patience. (I hope I do not get a 1 out of 10 score! You might just give me 1 for effort???)  


(In your example, the flood and the mould were NOT simultaneous. And they must have considered the Flood to be the primary proximate cause. And Flood is covered.) 

DullGreyGuy

The policy is written on a insured perils bases and therefore for there to be cover the damage must have been caused by one of the listed perils. As such as "wind" isnt in itself listed as a peril there would be no cover for it unless it was of a severity sufficient to meet the definition of "storm". I think you would struggle to claim that wind itself is a " sudden, unforeseen and unintentional event"

If you look at other Ombudsman cases you will see plenty being declined due to not meeting storm conditions... in a few cases the falling roof tiles caused further damage and these were considered eligible under AD even if it wasnt deemed a storm that caused them to fall. In no cases did the ombudsman consider the wind itself under AD. 

The lack of embolding in the Buildings AD section in theory means the special term doesnt apply but instead a dictionary definition which would be less strict about a 55mph wind speed requirement. That said, it does seem a typographical error and so if the Ombudsman would allow plain english or say policy term applies is a bit of gamble. 

The JL policy is one of the stricter ones when it comes to inclement weather

Annemos

Many thanks for your review, DGG. In my own policy wording sent to me with the policy, those words are indeed highlighted. They perhaps did a recent update and it fell through the cracks on the on-line example. 

Yes it is very strict. One would hope the premiums charged reflect that lesser risk for the Insurer! 


Last thing.... is there any difference between "caused by" and "arising from" in insurance terms?

When I was googling, I was getting the impression that "caused by" is more likely to imply that they are looking at what the First cause was in a chain of events. To see what the claim falls under and if it would be accepted. 

But if it says "arising from" then that more easily tends to this....  Cause 1 leads to Cause 2 leads to Cause 3 leads to damage.  And if ANY of those caused in the chain were an exclusion, then the Insurance would not have to pay out. 

Have you come across that? 

PS. I think I did only get a 1/10! 

DullGreyGuy

A US article but shows there is no one simple answer https://www.irmi.com/articles/expert-commentary/arising-out-of-how-strong-is-the-connection

Commercial insurance will always be much stricter on interpretation, in UK consumer insurance the ombudsman will accept any reasonable lay person interpritation, so its up to the insurer to ensure its clear enough else they may have to payout based on alternative interpritations.

In principle if an insurer has harsher conditions then it will payout less meaning it can afford to sell policies cheaper. Realities can however be more complex as some may routinely give benefit of the doubt or run a highly staffed/paid service department. You however also have to consider the non-risk based elements of pricing… are they wanting to grow the book no matter the cost? In cash cow phase where its about milking the existing customers? This can be further complicated in white label situations depending on if the brand has simply sold its logo or is trying to act as more of a joint venture.

For example, with one large household store brand they were happy to write all the insurance at cost because it was just an added service for them whereas the insurer clearly wanted to write it in a profitable way and so there was some tension in the JV. Similarly one "customer focused" brands wanted the cheapest possible quality and sold it for a large markup.