Home insurance money saving schemes

Home insurance is a necessary precaution for all home owners. Costs can vary pretty wildly, depending on how you shop for your policy and how you look after your property. You will of course be aware of the price comparison websites that can quickly find the most competitive deals for your circumstances. The focus of this article is adjusting your circumstances favourably to decrease the risk of a claim on your home insurance, and therefore lower the cost of your premium overall.

Risk assessment is at the heart of insurance calculations. Hundreds of factors are taken into account by the provider of your home insurance when assessing the risk to your property and contents. As the perceived potential risk of damage rises so does the cost of your premium. It makes sense to disregard the external factors that are beyond your control, such as the crime rate of the area that you live in, and focus on what you can do to improve home security and therefore counter the wider risk.

Home insurance premium discounts will be won through fitting or upgrading to insurer approved locks, on both doors and windows. By insurer, this means any of the institutions such as the high street bank Santander that now provide home insurance. For door locks, the industry approved standard is the five lever mortise lock.

Another discount can be achieved through fitting an approved burglar alarm with 24 hour remote support, with a typical premium reduction of up to around 12.5%. It is important to note that installing and running such devices is relatively expensive, and so the cost will be significantly higher than the average saving on your yearly premium. However you will benefit from a genuine increase in the security of your home, and the discount will continue to apply over the years. A much cheaper security enhancement that can lower your home insurance premium can be to start a neighbourhood watch scheme in your area.

Another cheap upgrade not focussed on security is fitting fire alarms. 20% of insurers now give a discount for homes fitted with approved smoke alarms, which unlike burglar alarms are still relatively cheap – these devices will definitely pay for themselves over just a few years in terms of a reduced premium cost.