Insurance and building work

battenburg88

Just wondering how home insurance companies deal with minor renovation work. Our home insurance is with Nationwide (unwritten by Royal Sun Alliance) so specific experiences would be welcome. I’ve found lots of examples of similar queries, but mainly for larger work and not always with a conclusion!

2 bits of work are planned - lifting floorboards in the living room insulating.This will also include some levelling and repairs to wallplates/joists if required, but only like for like.

Second thing is to reroof a lean to utility room, insulate and install a velux window. This is all effectively like for like as well, but the roof joists are being changed to deeper ones so the insulation can be fitted so potentially considered ‘structural’ (though not being done for that reason).

This is obviously pretty minor stuff in the grand scheme of building work and I hadn’t thought about having to tell my insurer until just now. In the statement of facts it currently has a declaration that no building work is happening, but doesn’t mention anything about this in the policy document itself. Just that if there is a change in circumstances I should tell them.

Looking at the policies of a few other insurers, some of them define a cost threshold of when they need to be told (the work would be way below the threshold of these examples). But Nationwide don’t say anything, making me think it could be a blanket no.

I don’t mind paying an extra bit for the month that the work is happening if that’s what’s needed.

I’m hoping Nationwide are large enough that some other customers might be on this forum!

MyRealNameToo

Insurers vary significantly in terms of what they are happy to cover and what needs to be run past them first. I've seen some high net worth policies that only require to be told if the value of the works is more than 20% of the sum insured for the home and given they dont insure rebuild costs under £500,000 then anything costing under £100k is ok by them but others are much more picky and want to be told about more or less anything more than hanging a picture or painting a wall and may or may not be happy with the policy remaining in place whilst the work Is done. 

Be a little careful on your last point, Nationwide has switched insurers several times, they have now left RSA and gone to Aviva, so someone may post their experience but it could be when the bank was with another carrier. 

battenburg88

Yes, I realised when looking at things yesterday that Aviva are now the underwriter for new policies for Nationwide, but mine is still RSA. Will bear that in mind!

I think I need to tell them, but just trying to get a feel for whether to brace myself for an impending dash to find new insurers (luckily the work hasn't started yet). I got a bit burnt with travel insurance a couple of years ago just before I was due to go on holiday and it was very stressful.

My feeling is that, for the scale of work I'm taking about here, either a) most people don't realise their insurer wants to know or b) the work is so small that many insurers are fine about it and therefore there aren't tales on the internet of people having their policies cancelled. 

MyRealNameToo

battenburg88 said:

Yes, I realised when looking at things yesterday that Aviva are now the underwriter for new policies for Nationwide, but mine is still RSA. Will bear that in mind!

I think I need to tell them, but just trying to get a feel for whether to brace myself for an impending dash to find new insurers (luckily the work hasn't started yet). I got a bit burnt with travel insurance a couple of years ago just before I was due to go on holiday and it was very stressful.

My feeling is that, for the scale of work I'm taking about here, either a) most people don't realise their insurer wants to know or b) the work is so small that many insurers are fine about it and therefore there aren't tales on the internet of people having their policies cancelled. 

The lack of trail of devastation is because most people dont realise they need to have the conversation and so dont and nothing happens so everyone is none the wiser.

There have been a few threads where people have had an extension done, didnt think about reporting it before the works were undertaken but got unstuck when they called their insurer to either increase the sum insured or increase the number of bedrooms because of the added value and at that point the insurer reacted to the prior failure to inform. 

Can't say its an area I've ever dealt with from a professional perspective so can't really give any inside information other than the more general piece that ultimately its call centre agents you will be talking to and their response therefore will be very heavily influenced by how you describe it. In your opening post you mentioned about replacing joists, that is likely more triggering than were you to simply say you're removing the floor to add insulation but naturally will take the opportunity to fix anything you find after taking up the floor. Certainly not advocating lying but agents arent trained in home construction etc, they are just listening for key words 

battenburg88

I asked someone I know that had a loft conversion recently and they didn't tell their insurer until the work was complete and they had more bedrooms/bathrooms. I'd expect that was due to ignorance more than anything else, but seemingly the insurer was fine with it and didn't question how the new room was added.

This work won't change the configuration of the house or the footprint or anything, its just more substantial than a lick of paint. Won't be moving out or anything and hopefully finished in 3-4 weeks. 

I'll try and be careful how I phrase it. I don't think I'm getting a great deal with Nationwide anyway, but because of getting anxious when speaking to insurers I just haven't attempted to go elsewhere and get a better price. If they say that this work will be a problem in terms of cover then maybe that will be the prod I need. Though honestly I would prefer them to just says its fine and let me get on with things. 

battenburg88

So I spoke to the insurer and they were fine with it but have added some exclusions on the policy. I had to explain the work that was being carried out, and the thing that seemed to trigger it being classed as 'building work' was the addition of a Velux window. Which is a bit odd, because that's really quite a minor bit of the whole work (in what is already fairly minor work anyway). Not sure if it was quite that clear cut, but anyway.

One thing was that they asked whether the house will be unoccupied. I said that we might be away overnight at weekends or for a few days, particularly as its around Christmas, but not moving out as such whilst the work is done. As it stands I can't tell them exactly what those dates would be, so I agreed that for now they could say it would be a blanket 'unoccupied' (I need to clarify a couple of other things as well and confirm the exact date the work will start, so I think there will still be an update to be made to the documents).

I've just checked and my Policy defines 'unoccupied' as "when your home is not lived in for more than 60 days in a row" and the exclusion does not redefine this. However, the guy on the phone said that in this context they define unoccupied as, I think, just being away overnight. It sounded like if I told them exactly when I would be away then the exclusions for being unoccupied would only apply to those periods but I'm sure if that's the case.

I wonder where I stand whereby the definition in the Policy isn't changed, but by being away for perhaps just a weekend or two over the course of a month then they are deeming the house as 'unoccupied'. Maybe they could re-issue the policy multiple times, so I would have a different exclusion for, say, a weekend and then they would give us new documents when we're back.