Is Home Insurance Important?

If you own your home there are a million and one things that you need to have in place. You need to make sure that you have all of your direct debits in place to pay your bills on time, have a yearly visit from your heating engineer to service your boiler to name just a few.

Something that is usually required if you have a mortgage is home insurance. This is particularly important should, in the worst case scenario happen that your home needs to be re-built. Also home contents insurance is very important in case your home suffers from a break-in and you need to replace your belongings.

Of course some of us will struggle to find the right home insurance ,and what is the best place to actually find the right deal to suit all of your needs?

At the moment many of us are struggling with the cost of living and energy prices rising very quickly along with interest rates and food prices. Many people are looking to save money wherever they can, but be warned there a few thing you should never cancel. If you cancel your home insurance you could be leaving yourself open to large bills down the line. The same as if you have life insurance and you cancel it, you could leave your loved ones in a difficult position should the worst happen. Although it appears that you get nothing in return for insurance, the biggest thing any kind of insurance gives you is peace of mind for those unexpected moments in life.

YouGov have a survey that was commissioned by HSBC to help educate people about home insurance and the best way to find it, as well as debunking some of the myths surrounding the topic of home insurance.

The results of the survey are actually quite fascinating of how people approach home insurance.

Some of the reasons for and against home insurance was very interesting. For example, 30% said it was too expensive. 18% said it was comforting. 41% said it gave them peace of mind. 49% said it was necessary and 31% said it was reassuring. For myself personally I definitely fall in the category of saying it was necessary and completely agree with all of the others.

The research also found out how much time the average person spends looking for the right insurance. 47% spent up to one hour, 17% 1-2 hours and just 7% spend 1 day to 1 week.

The survey also tried to find out where people do their research, if, in fact, they do any research at all. Coming out on top was 60% said they use price comparison websites and I have to admit that would be the way I would look for insurance. 16% relied upon recommendations and 12% on customers reviews.

The survey by YouGov aimed to find out what is the most important in selecting a particular insurer. This could be price, quality of cover or other factors. The survey discovered that 69% said price was important. 71% said that the quality of cover was most important to them and finally 38% said reputation of the insurer was most important to them.

One of the most difficult aspects of getting home insurance is that you actually understand what you are getting. 72% said they fully understood what they have purchased and 10% said they didn’t understand.

There may come an occasion where you need to make a claim although hopefully you won’t and very interestingly 61% have never made a claim.

The survey has definitely shown up some very interesting results and certainly made me think when I need to renew my home insurance how I will go about it.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.