Home and Contents Insurance; I live by a river!

MsNH

Hi all, a bit of a rant and a warning here.  I just had my Swinton renewal, gone from £400 to £1100! so looking for a better deal.
I did what was suggested, went on comparison sites and then top cashback.  Intelligent Insurance were the cheapest so went to purchase next years insurance,  I was just getting to the pay up bit and lo! 
They will not cover for flood damage even though I said the house had flooded briefly nearly 4 years ago. Surely this is some sharp practice and I wonder if it is allowed. To take all the information, and not say up front they wont cover flood damage, bah!

dunstonh

They will not cover for flood damage even though I said the house had flooded briefly nearly 4 years ago. 

The probably told you that BECAUSE you said it had flooded.

Surely this is some sharp practice and I wonder if it is allowed. 

Nothing wrong with what they are doing and its common across many different types of insurance.  Not just household.  

To take all the information, and not say up front they wont cover flood damage, bah!

Whilst its possible that some systems will check underwriting issues as you key data in, some will wait until they have the full information before they run it through their underwriting system.       

Copy and paste from Intelligent Insurance
Intelligent Insurance can provide flood cover with home insurance but not in ALL policies. This varies by your specific location and postcode, and the history of flood to you or neighbouring properties.  Before you conclude a quotation with us, we will clearly confirm if flood cover is excluded and this will appear in the Policy Schedule under ‘Endorsements’.  

Aretnap

MsNH said:

They will not cover for flood damage even though I said the house had flooded briefly nearly 4 years ago. Surely this is some sharp practice and I wonder if it is allowed. To take all the information, and not say up front they wont cover flood damage, bah!

It's allowed. They should tell you about any major exclusions before you actually commit to buying and part with your money. Beyond that there isn't any specific point in the quote process where they have to flash them on the screen.

In any event as above it may not be possible to say earlier in the quote process whether the exclusion would apply. They might have a simple rule along the lines of "no flood cover is flooded in the last 5 years". But it could just as easily be something more complicated along the lines of "no flood cover if flooded in the last 5 years AND in a generally high risk area AND total value of contents is above £X0000 etc etc...", in which case they would have to collect most or all of the information before they could say whether it would apply at all.