Home Insurance Discount Strategies

Home insurance is a prudent precaution for all home owners. The cost of home insurance can vary pretty wildly, depending on how you buy your policy and how you look after your property. Most people are now aware of the price comparison websites that can make short work of the task of finding the most competitive deals for your circumstances. Here we will focus on the measures that you can take to adjust these circumstances so as to decrease the risk of a claim on your home insurance, and therefore lower the cost of your premium.

Insurance is all about risk assessment. Many, often hundreds of factors are taken into account by the provider of your home insurance when assessing the risk to your property and the contents within. The higher the perceived potential risk of damage, the higher your home insurance premium will be. There will always be external factors that are out with your control, such as the crime rate of the area that you live in. However, there is almost always something you can do to ameliorate the potential risk in question, and security is an easy place to start.

Security upgrades that will attract a home insurance discount include fitting or upgrading to insurer approved locks, on both doors and windows. Just to make things clear, this term should perhaps be insurance provider, as there are several different types of institution such as the high street bank Santander that now provide home insurance, alongside the traditional dedicated insurance industry. Five lever mortise door locks are generally the industry approved standard.

Fitting a burglar alarm can also attract a home insurance discount, although again this must be of the approved specification. A discount of around 12.5% is typical for fitting an approved alarm, which is usually the type with 24 hour remote support. It must be noted that installing and running such devices is relatively expensive, and so the cost will be significantly higher than the average saving on your premium. You will however benefit from a genuine increase in the security of your home, and the discount will continue to apply over the years. At the other end of the financial scale, one of the cheapest security enhancements that can lower your home insurance premium can be to start a neighbourhood watch scheme in your area.

Outside of security, another cheap upgrade that can make an impact on your home insurance costs 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, and will definitely pay for themselves over a few years in terms of premium reduction costs.