Home Contents Insurance for non-standard situations

Privilege435

Hi... We need Contents Insurance but we don't seem to fit the standard profiles for the comparison websites. So, recommendations please for people who are away for 45-60 days at a time, some highish value bits of jewellery. Currently with M&S but they want a touch over £1000, up from £750 last year and around £500 the year before that. No claims made, safe area, top floor apartment. Shouldn't be that difficult but I'm losing the will too live. One final thing... tried Hiscox but we aren't rich enough for them:)

DullGreyGuy

Privilege435 said:

Hi... We need Contents Insurance but we don't seem to fit the standard profiles for the comparison websites. So, recommendations please for people who are away for 45-60 days at a time, some highish value bits of jewellery. Currently with M&S but they want a touch over £1000, up from £750 last year and around £500 the year before that. No claims made, safe area, top floor apartment. Shouldn't be that difficult but I'm losing the will too live. One final thing... tried Hiscox but we aren't rich enough for them:)

Is that their premier? Clearly dont like your area as we are similar but also paying a 25% premium for Tenants Improvements and are c£600/year with a theft claim and £20k PP cover outside the home. 

What's the total of your contents? What's the total of your valuables (traditional meaning of jewerly, art etc)? What sort of values are the "highish" single articles? Do you need personal possessions cover? Again what's the upper single items?

NFU were relatively good until we added PP cover where it got silly because of the relatively modest single article limit outside the home meaning many things had to be listed despite the fact they'd never all go out at the same time

The pushing on Mid Net Worth Home insurance offering is fairly limited at the moment, most you're looking at at least £1k for a true MNW let alone a HNW like Hiscox proper (not their direct offering)

Privilege435

Yes DullGreyGuy, it is Premier. The values haven't even indexed since taking it out in 2016. There's £50k valuables with a single item limit of £15k. Contents away from home £30k. Looking at the details I can see it is the Contents away from home that is killing me... £899, but the things is we never take more than a small fraction of the £30k away with us. A phone call to them is in order! Thanks for making me take time to study the docs!!!!

DullGreyGuy

Privilege435 said:

Yes DullGreyGuy, it is Premier. The values haven't even indexed since taking it out in 2016. There's £50k valuables with a single item limit of £15k. Contents away from home £30k. Looking at the details I can see it is the Contents away from home that is killing me... £899, but the things is we never take more than a small fraction of the £30k away with us. A phone call to them is in order! Thanks for making me take time to study the docs!!!!

Was talking about your values, its a "bedroom rated" policy so the limits are blanket/everyone gets the same rather than you telling them the sums insured. 

For the non-specified Personal Possessions items, which as you say is anything under £15k, the limit needs to be the  total you will take out with you at any one time. Remember it has global coverage so probably your max value would be set to what you are likely to take on holiday with you. 

M&S/Aviva dont allow specified items over £15k but with a more normal insurer the unspecified item is more likely to be £1,500 or £2,000 and so for PP you need to list all items over that amount and you get charged for each of them. So have 8 Chanel handbags you pay for talking all 8 of them out even though realistically it would only ever be 2 at a time max. 

Sounds like the PP may be to high and is what's driving the premiums (our claim was on PP) so adjust it to something more appropriate.

Privilege435

Contents away from home halved to a more realistic value and the premium came down from £1001 to £595. A reasonable result I think. Certainly better than going through the pain of trying to find a new company.