Dare to Share

So you’ve just received your Home Insurance Renewal and it seems quite expensive - what do you do? Stick with your current insurer, because they seem like a nice bunch, or try to find a cheaper quote. Well, I’m hoping you’ve opted for the latter? If so, then read on and I’ll tell you how to get your insurance premium down and save yourself a whole heap of money that’ll come in useful when your water boiler packs up!!

I’ve just had another person ask me how they can get it cheaper so rather than just tell him I thought I’d tell the world so you can all, hopefully, benefit.

1. Your Renewal: Wait until you receive your renewal premium from your current insurer.
2. Search the Web: Armed with the latest renewal price and current insurance documents it’s time to get down to business by searching the trusty old web. Get a pen and paper for this so you can jot down all of the cheap prices you find (or set up a spreadsheet to be uber-organised.
3. Use Price Comparison Sites: Go to the following websites and enter all the required information moneysupermarket.com, Confused.com, OnlyInsurance.com and Direct Line (yes, I know they’re not a price comparison website but they don’t advertise on any of those sites and, in fact, can sometimes be the cheapest option). It’s a bit of pain having to enter the same information over and over but it doesn’t take too long and always think of the savings. Remember to check the final prices on a like-for-like basis with your current insurance. If you want to reduce your excess amounts then factor this in to the overall cost and it’s also worth calling your current insurers to see how much they would charge for lowering your excess so you can compare prices accurately with one-another.
4. Check through the Cashback Sites: Hopefully you’ll have made a saving by doing this but go one step further by checking the top individual insurer’s sites via a Cashback Site. Taking the top five insurers from each of those comparison sites and check Quidco, Cashback Kings, Top Cashback and We Promise To and see whether they have any cashback deals for Home Insurance. If they do then subtract this from the relevant insurer and then click through, from the cashback site, to the insurer and get a quote direct from the company to compare the quote. The reason why you have to do this is that you may find your quote will be a lot higher as they sometimes factor in the amount of cashback they are paying and add that on top of your overall quote - crafty yes, but if you’re clever and patient you will find a great deal.
5. Call your current insurer: You should now have a lot of numbers and company’s written down or typed up. From this you’ll be able to see, at-a-glance, what the cheapest option is. I would always call your current insurer and ask whether they would match the cheapest quote you’ve had - if not then switch.
6. Go for it: Remember to cancel your current policy when you’ve signed up with your new insurer and don’t forget to do it all over again next year.

I’d be really interested to know how you get on and how much money you saved by following this guide. I’m sure readers would like to know as well so please post a comment, obviously not including any personal information such as your address!