Home insurance and bike theft

SiliconChip

My home insurance is due for renewal next month. In February this year I bought an e-bike, and because it cost a lot more than the maximum bike cover in my home policy (£1400 compared to £500) I took out a stand alone policy with Cycleplan.

The bike was stolen from my garage in June, and today Cycleplan have finally confirmed that they'll be paying the full amount of the claim (less excess). I'm unsure whether this needs to be declared when getting quotes for my new home insurance policy. I had a look at the MSE Compare+ home insurance tool and it asks about home insurance claims, but this isn't one. If it should be declared then at least in that tool there seems to be no way to do it, would I need to get quotes without it then contact the insurers direct to establish if they need to know and recalculate the premium accordingly?

MyRealNameToo

are you sure thats what the site is asking? Would be very unusual these days if it is. Almost everyone asks about incidents or losses irrespective of if you claimed or not. 

Did you inform your home insurers that the bike was at your home? Even if you have insurance elsewhere you still need to let them know as they may consider it changes the risk profile (eg for theft or fire). 

Ultimately answer the questions honestly without overthinking it. 

TELLIT01

Comparison sites only really give the bare bones of a policy T&C.  It's still necessary to go through policy documents carefully.  Our home insurance has bikes as a separate item.

SiliconChip

The MSE tool's question is "Have you made any home insurance claims or suffered any losses in the last 5 years?", but it's not clear from that whether the losses part refers to things that were covered by the home insurance.

However, it does expand on it by saying 

Wondering what counts?

Please let us know about any claims you've made from damage to property, items being stolen or injury to other people. You should include these incidents whether or not you made a claim, and whether or not you were paid for that claim. Examples of incidents that insurers need to know about are any claims, burglary, vandalism, fire, water or storm damage.

So I guess to be on the safe side the answer is probably Yes, although it then goes on to assume that you have made a claim on your home insurance (even though it specifically says whether or not you made a claim) so it seems rather poorly worded. I suspect I will need to get an idea of which insurers have a suitable quote but then contact them direct to explain the circumstances in full.

On your point about informing my current insurers about the bike the answer is no, I didn't, as I felt that as I'd never make a claim for the bike itself it was nothing to do with them, but you may be right about the change of risk profile for other possible claims so I perhaps should have done that (although when taking out a policy in the first place I'm not sure I've ever seen one ask about high value items that aren't to be covered). 

MyRealNameToo

SiliconChip said:

The MSE tool's question is "Have you made any home insurance claims or suffered any losses in the last 5 years?", but it's not clear from that whether the losses part refers to things that were covered by the home insurance.

However, it does expand on it by saying 

Wondering what counts?

Please let us know about any claims you've made from damage to property, items being stolen or injury to other people. You should include these incidents whether or not you made a claim, and whether or not you were paid for that claim. Examples of incidents that insurers need to know about are any claims, burglary, vandalism, fire, water or storm damage.

So I guess to be on the safe side the answer is probably Yes, although it then goes on to assume that you have made a claim on your home insurance (even though it specifically says whether or not you made a claim) so it seems rather poorly worded. I suspect I will need to get an idea of which insurers have a suitable quote but then contact them direct to explain the circumstances in full.

On your point about informing my current insurers about the bike the answer is no, I didn't, as I felt that as I'd never make a claim for the bike itself it was nothing to do with them, but you may be right about the change of risk profile for other possible claims so I perhaps should have done that (although when taking out a policy in the first place I'm not sure I've ever seen one ask about high value items that aren't to be covered). 

It will depend on the particular site, some will explicitly ask if you claimed on your Home/Motor insurance or not if you answer "yes" to this type of question. As always, make sure when you click through to the sellers site that the answers have been interpreted correctly based on their question set which is likely to be different to the aggregators. 

Most Home insurers dont ask "what the value of the items you want to insure" but "what's the total value of your property" and so you'd need to include it in its value. Online sales are there to deal with the 95% and the majority of people dont have seperate policies. With our policy our cycles are within the single article limit (£15,000) and so not need to be individually declared. They would need to be declared if we wanted cover for them away from the home but their price is really high so were we to start locking bikes up away from the home we'd buy an independent policy. Technical it would mean dual cover whilst in the home but Bike policies dont normally have a dual insurance clause so can just claim from the specialist policy.

When you get into high net worth policies were Fine Art policies and such are more common then questions about other insurances becomes more common but then you are dealing with a person not a website so can have a proper discussion about it but then you are looking at at least a four figure policy, or more, and so there are the margins to have well trained brokers involved rather than websites. 

SiliconChip

Just to concluded this:

I did a quote with Direct Line, stating that the claim was on contents (as that and buildings were the only options offered), premium of £328.

I went to a local broker who took all the details and confirmed that their system would allow them to say that there was a claim but not on the household policy, premium £358 (plus £30 for legal cover).

I called my current insurer again (my previous attempt was terminated by me as they seemed unable to understand the circumstances) and this time got someone who understood my explanation, they spoke to the underwriters who quickly confirmed that the bike theft did not affect the renewal quote I'd been given, premium £153, so with a saving of around £200 (and £15 less than last year's premium) it was a no brainer to renew. The only condition is that if I replace they bike they need to know about it even if I purchase stand alone cover again.