Cut your home insurance costs

Top 10 Tips to reduce your home insurance premium

You could be paying over the odds for your home insurance by not taking advantage of discounts available from insurers. Here are our top 10 tips for reducing your home insurance premiums:

1. Fit a burglar alarm – but to attract up to a 5% discount, the system should be fitted by a NACOSS approved company and include an annual maintenance contract. Also, don’t forget that it must be operational every time you leave the house empty.

2. Check your door locks – check that your door locks have the kite mark BS3621. If they do, most insurance companies will knock off 5%.

3. Fit window locks – just having these will give you a 5% discount.

4. Fit smoke detectors – you should really have these from a safety point of view, but as long as they are kept fully operational, most insurers will give you a 5% discount.

5. Don’t smoke! – most insurers ask this question. If there’s a smoker in the house, there will normally be an increase to your premium.

6. Set up an approved Neighbourhood Watch Scheme – As well as giving you a chance to get to know the neighbours, it will get you an extra 5% discount.

7. Take a voluntary excess – you can expect to get 5% off for a £50 excess rising to as much as 20% for £250 which is worth thinking about.

8. Combine your building and contents insurance under one insurer – You may get a discount, but some accidents in the home could end up being split over two insurers and it is much easier to deal with one.

9. Think carefully about additional accidental damage cover – This could increase your premium by a further 25%, check the details carefully as standard cover be sufficient.

10. Don’t claim unless absolutely you need to! – it sounds silly, but it may well not be worth making small claims. You will have to pay any excess that you have on your policy, which may be greater than the value of the item you are claiming for.