Wall cracks and home insurance.

BucketFull

Hi all.

I am confused about home insurance and cracks on walls (internal and external).

When I used a comparison site to compare home insurance quotes, the usual popular home insurance companies appeared in the numerous results at the normal prices, however, if I choose yes for the question asking if there are any cracks, it only returned one result and that was from a company I had never heard of.

I understand that the quote is nearly double the price of a non-cracks quote, which I assume is interpreted as a risk of subsidence, but why did the other companies not appear in the results anymore? Do the usual companies not cater for subsidence claims?

If I inform my current company of cracks, what would be the usual process that would then take place? My current insurance policy shows a figure for the excess for 'subsidence' in the main summary of the policy, so does that indicate that subsidence is already covered? I don't remember specifying if there were any cracks at the time of purchasing the policy, especially since it was two years ago as the policy auto-renewed.

Any information would be appreciated.

Thank you.

DullGreyGuy

Not via aggregators no, a few more will quote by their own website where they can ask more questions and a few more still by telephone. 

Many insurers dont ask if you apply directly but instead have questions about history or signs of subsidence, groundswell etc and a general one about good state of repair. However aggregators have to deal with the requirements of the bigger insurers or collectives of medium sized ones and whilst say Churchill won't ask it if you go direct having seen the answer via an aggregator they will take it into account. 

BucketFull

Thanks for the reply.

So is it just that the price goes up and not a process that has to be followed, eg. any inspections, etc?

DullGreyGuy

BucketFull said:

So is it just that the price goes up and not a process that has to be followed, eg. any inspections, etc?

Consumer insurance has low prices and slim margins, for the majority it's just not worth the time and effort to do inspections etc pre-sale. They either simply say no or take a punt. 

A minority will consider edge cases if the customer provides engineer reports etc but they are a minority and often older insurers. Plus there are specialist MGAs but then they arent always the cheapest and at the same time they're an intermediary so its not their money on the line if they get it wrong.