House Insurance and Flood Risk.

MrsAwkward

Hello, 
Does anyone have any knowledge of how house insurance with a flood risk is assessed. The Environment Agency map is showing differing levels of risk for properties actually built on to each other in my street. They have been unhelpful in answering my queries, as have the insurance company. I'm slightly suspecting that my disclosure is affecting my premiums.
I am paying a deal more than neighbours despite shopping around. Surely the 2 halves of a semi-detached house should have the same risk.

user1977

MrsAwkward said:

I'm slightly suspecting that my disclosure is affecting my premiums.

Your disclosure of what? Has there been past flooding of the property?

MrsAwkward

Yes, there was an incident a few years back that I always disclose.

user1977

I expect the insurers will place more weight on actual past flooding than anybody's prediction of future flooding - the EA maps are quite low resolution, nobody has been out to survey the exact contours, permeability etc of your neighbourhood.

MrsAwkward

Thanks. I suspect neighbours are not disclosing.  It just makes me wonder with semi-detached houses, if people leave themselves open to having their claims refused, where do you stand if neighbours house is left unrepaired.

MyRealNameToo

MrsAwkward said:

Thanks. I suspect neighbours are not disclosing.  It just makes me wonder with semi-detached houses, if people leave themselves open to having their claims refused, where do you stand if neighbours house is left unrepaired.

Potentially in a problem... in Scotland where insuring single flats rather than blocks used to be the norm there was another policy you could buy to cover the risk that one of your neighbours had failed to insure but that worked there, I believe, because there is a requirement for someone to have insurance whereas in a semi its technically your free choice if you insure or not. 

EA is certainly a significant source of flood data for insurers but there are also plenty of software packages like RMS, EquiCat and AIR that will model anticipated losses in cat events like flooding, earthquake etc. They are more commonly used in commercial property where quotes arent instant but know some that write both consumer and commercial do use the softwares across their whole books. 

huckster

Presumably you know about this website link.

Flood Re - A flood re-insurance scheme https://www.floodre.co.uk/

Insurers do have data about flood risks down to the second part of postcode. But depending on local land and river depth at particular points, some houses may have been flooded before and others not affected.

Yes Insurers also take into account information disclosed online and if someone enters wrong information about an address, this could affect future occupants of the address. Sometimes when someone moves to a new address  if they don't know the area they may not be aware of previous flooding.