Why your home insurance may be invalid..

We all sign up for insurance products hoping they will provide peace of mind and expecting the cover to be there when we need it. But like all insurance products, house insurance come’s with terms and conditions attached, with the onus on you to disclose all relevant information to the insurer. Because of that, what can seem like a relatively minor non disclosure can invalidate your insurance. Here are some common ways we have found that people have invalidated their insurance.

1. Not disclosed that they have a flat roof in their home: Most insurer’s will allow you to have up to maybe 15 or 20 % of your overall roof area as flat or non standard roof. If you go above that however and haven’t disclosed it to your insurer, you could be in serious trouble at claim time.
2. An accidental non disclosure. You have had a minor claim some years back on a different property to your existing home, so you don’t have any need to disclose that to your new insurer. Right? Wrong. Any home insurer will expect to have been told about any claim in any property withing the last 6 years (including a business premises). Failure to do so will probably mean your cover is invalid.
3. Having a non motoring convictions: If, for example, you were given a slap on the wrist 10 years ago for smoking marijuana at a music festival, this has to be disclosed to your home insurer. If it hasn’t then you probably don’t have any cover.
4. Running a business from your home If you are operating anything other than a basic one person home office from your home than your insurer needs to know about it. Standard insurers are usually very slow to cover those that run business’ from or near their main properties. If you haven’t already agreed this with insurer than you probably don’t have any cover.
5. Not disclosed the proper occupancy of your home. Most standard insurers will expect your home to be occupied regularly by you and your family. If your home is rented out to someone else or is unoccupied for more than 30 days, this needs to be disclosed to your insurer. Landlord and unoccupied premises need to be insured under a specialist policy. You will not be covered if you have a standard house policy and your home is rented or unoccupied.
6. You had a gap in cover but didn’t disclose it. Home insurer’s expect you to have had continuous home insurance cover (obviously if you have just bought a house this isn’t the case). If you have taken out a policy after a significant gap in time since your last policy, this needs to be disclosed and will probably invalidate your policy if not.

The above list is not exhaustive but it shows how careful you need to be when taking out home insurance. If you are worried that your existing cover maybe invalid, talk to one of our property experts today on 0818919699 or click here and we will help you source the correct cover.