Same company - online quote significantly cheaper than renewal. Can I take it?

James_Blonde

As the title says.  It's HomeProtect, renewal due tomorrow.  Can I take the online quote and cancel the renewal???  We're talking between £300 and £600 cheaper than the renewal price here - not £50 here or there. 

As much as anything, it's been really easy to tweak my quote using their online system (change items covered, change excesses, etc), where trying to do it via the renewal team is an absolute nightmare (background noise, not listening to what I'm saying, impatience, contradicting themselves, etc) and then it's referred to underwriting and stuck for (currently) 2 days so can't make any further changes! 

I think I'm going to be looking at this into my cooling off period as well - such a PITA the amount of work I'm putting into this. 

pramsay13

how much is the annual premium if £600 is the saving?
Nothing stopping you taking the online quote and cancelling the renewal but just check your policy for how to do that effectively and that the cover is sufficient.

James_Blonde

£1600.....  2 contents claims (£3000 and £1400) plus a lot of away from home or valuable items, plus 90000 contents.  Oh, and a listed building. But online wisdom suggests it's the claims more than anything. 

cw8825

I’d be comparing both policies very carefully before going with the cheaper one. 

Especially if it’s the same company. 

It would look like the cheaper one is missing some things off

James_Blonde

The irony is I've actually added stuff!!  Done a bit of restructuring as well, and added what I would have thought would be an additional risk but didn't add anything to the cost!  Feels like something very weird going on

DullGreyGuy

James_Blonde said:

The irony is I've actually added stuff!!  Done a bit of restructuring as well, and added what I would have thought would be an additional risk but didn't add anything to the cost!  Feels like something very weird going on

Hence the suggestion of actually looking at the policy itself to see if the online one has all the same covers for matching sets, trace and access, accidental damage etc. The same vendor can have different products they sell via different channels, those quoted via aggregators are fairly often cut down versions because those customers are much more price than quality driven whereas the phone version tends to be the fullest coverage. Sometimes however it's just differential pricing by channel. 

TELLIT01

Call the insurer.  As you only have one day to make a decision, making the wrong one could be an expensive mistake.

James_Blonde

Interesting evening.... 

Cancelled my renewal, and took out a new policy with HomeProtect.  The advisor could see my new quote, could compare my quote vs my renewal, but couldn't get my renewal to to come to the same price as the new quote, despite confirming that my new level of cover was significantly better and more comprehensive than my renewal quote. 

Also spent a lot of time playing around with their quote system again.  Brought up some really interesting and weird quirks....

For example, 

• our house has a burglar alarm.  If I say we don't use the burglar alarm, the price goes DOWN.

• I was asking for a total contents cover on £90K on the renewal.  By choosing £200K, the price goes DOWN.  Not that I need £200K, but if it costs less to be over-insured, then woo, surely?
• Different locks, closeness to water sources, etc made absolutely no difference to the price.
• Higher excesses (unsurprisingly) make quite a significant difference to the price. 
• The previous claims were (unsurprisingly) the biggest factor in the price
• It looks like adding specified items away from the home is more cost effective than using the generic "valuables away of home" bucket

DullGreyGuy

Mass market consumer insurance in principle is 95%+ priced on statistical analysis rather than logic. 

I've done more Motor pricing work than Home so indulge me a little... negative selection can be a massive consideration. Take excess as an example, price tends to go down as you increase the excess to a point, it makes sense as claims are lower and you cannot claim for tiny things at all. If however you try and set an excess of £2,000 the premiums shoot up. For a start most dont offer £2k so your fishing in a smaller pool so less competitive pressure but also, who wants a £2k excess? Generally those who are a terrible risk with really high premiums and desperate to reduce their premiums. So, when you do your statistical analysis you get much worse claims experiences. 

Car group is the same, insuring a group 50 SL500 for £90,000 was cheaper than insuring a £25,000 Mini Cooper S as a category 23 car. Why? Because the former is owned predominately by mature middle-aged management types whereas the later is owned by 18 year old lads that show off or 45 year olds trying to do the same again. 

Insurance risk is not the only consideration in price, customer elasticity, propensity and cross sell opportunities are also considered; maybe not as much as in my day given the bans on new customer discounting. Its very expensive to sell insurance, a single click on Google can cost you over £10 and aggregators like confused.com can charge £60+ per sale, brokerage can be 25%+, IPT is 12%, how much the insurer themselves gets isn't massive. 

Those in the "mass exclusive" category can be very appealing customers... cash rich, time poor, they arent going to switch insurers to save £5 a year, their time is more valuable to them than that. Sometimes you will discount your price because your confident in your service and having a customer for 10 years is more valuable than getting an extra 10% premium in year 1 from someone who'll leave you next year. 

Home Protect in particular are an MGA. I dont know the particulars of their deal with Axa, who's money is ultimately on the line, but with many MGAs its them not the insurer that sets the price for what they sell. With them not being the one on risk for paying claims they can have differing priorities. Write lots of loss making business and an MGA will not have their agreement renewed and you then get stories like Towergate who really just ran out of companies willing to offer it their pen after so many were burnt. As such they be less sensitive to insurance risk and give more consideration to other factors.