Home Insurance Tips

Buildings and content insurance quotes involve enough variables to shave a slide rule's edges off. Yet I've a four step plan to quickly find the cheapest policy, possibly halving your costs.

Start by deciding whether it?s buildings, contents or combined insurance you need. The difference? If you turned your house upside down everything that falls is covered by contents, whatever stays firm by buildings.

Step 1: Lower the price regardless of policy

All insurance policy prices are based on risk assessments, so to cut the cost, cut the risk. It's especially important for contents insurance - fitting approved locks and alarms, neighbourhood watch and getting a dog all make policies cheaper - although the cost of increased security can outweigh the reduction in insurance cost.

Increasing the policy 'excess', the amount you must pay towards any claim, also cuts the cost, £50 to £100 is usual.

Step 2: Get the shopping around done automatically

Web users have an easy solution using a special 'screen scraping' website. Insure Supermarket trawls round around 60 brokers and direct sales companies and automatically fills in the quote forms for you. This effectively automates the shopping around process in about 5 minutes. Insure Supermarket makes its money from a lead fee paid by insurers if you get their policies via it.

Though for two insurers, if they come top, it makes you pay to find out who they are. In the rare event this happens, you can just opt for the free second best policy instead.

This system isn't foolproof. Not every insurer is searched, and unlike car insurance it has no competition. Those wanting to finesse more results should simply try unincluded insurers, e.g. Liverpool Victoria is a sometimes competitive provider that isn't covered.

Also, always remember Insure Supermarket is a quick quote system; if you have non-standard circumstances the exact price you get post-quote can change.

Step 3: Double check and get the discounts

Once you have the Insure Supermarket results, the top price is important as it shows their attitudes to your particular risk. Pick the top three and separately go to their websites, check the policies are suitable and requote - the more detailed information entered means the price may vary.

You may even be eligible for further direct (especially internet) discounts on top of the quotes you?ve got.

Step 4: Haggle

There's no such thing as a fixed price when it comes to insurance. The final step is get on the phone and try and haggle. There is often massive price flexibility, but be fully armed with the cheapest standard quote first.

Always try taking it to your existing insurer and a broker to see if they will beat it, and perhaps try shaving a few extra pounds off by mentioning your best quote.

Also beware, opt to pay monthly rather than in a lump sum and it costs more. In effect the insurer lends you the money for the lump sum and you pay back in installments plus interest (it can be 20%). For those which good credit scores, it's much cheaper just to pay on a 0% credit card and repay that way.

The Result

Using this four step solution works.

For buildings & contents insurance for a 4 bedroom semi-detached house in Manchester with £35,000 worth of contents. An initial quote from Direct Line was £557 and the AA offered £530; yet using this four step plan, Norwich Union Direct gave a quote of just under £300, though admittedly this included a special offer 25% discount. That's a saving of around £250, before the haggling even begins!