Ireland’s Home Insurance
Picture this you arrive home, your house is in a mess you come into your kitchen and find the kitchen window glass removed, you been robbed! Your laptops, cameras, watches, jewellery & cash are all gone.
When you calm down you say to yourself nobody was hurt everything can be replaced you have house insurance and you never claimed before. You make a claim for €12000.00 to cover your financial losses. Your insurance provider sends out an assessor, who agrees with the cost of your claim and a few weeks later a cheque arrives.
Then your house insurance policy renewal comes through the door, you can’t believe the cost has doubled. You have been with this insurance company for years and always paid on time. Unhappy you call another company for a quotation but after learning you made a claim, they don’t want to know you they refuse to provide a quotation at all.
Unfortunately the above scenario happens all the time. A recent survey by the National Consumer Agency (NCA) found that 6 different insurance companies will refuse to quote for home insurance for a house in Dublin after a €12000.00 claim was made after a burglary.
In the survey, the NCA sought quotations from a number of companies to insure a 3 bed townhouse in Dublin 6, where the rebuilding cost of the house was €350,000.00 and the contents were valued at €75,000.00. They asked for quotes for the house where there was no previous claim for burglary, and where there was one to the tune of €12,000.00 last year.
Quotations where the house had not been burgled ranged from €422.00 t0 €782.00. However where the house had been burgled 6 insurance companies refused outright to provide any quotation at all. Only two provided a quote with one wanting €706.00 to insure it and another demanding an astonishing €1083.00 for the same house, over €300.00 more than the highest quotation for a “non-burgled” scenario!
(The above information was researched on www.houseinsuranceireland.com)