Home Contents Insurance

Our homes are our castles. In fact, let’s make that more current. Our homes are our fortresses, our safe rooms, our places of security and safety.

It’s where we keep anything and everything which we hold valuable; our family, our memories and our most treasured possessions. We can get home insurance- to protect us against building and structural faults. However, this will only protect the shell, it won’t protect what lays inside should it be cracked open by burglars or a natural disaster. In the case of such tragedies we need home contents insurance.



As with all types of insurance the amount which you are ultimately asked to pay in monthly instalments will depend on two things; social factors and the amount and value of the contents which you are seeking to insure.

Let’s take both those points and explore them both a little further and a little more in depth. Firstly there are the social factors to consider. As with all other types of insurance, your payments will be calculated on the basis of how likely it is that your insurer will have to make a payout. This may seem very unfair but the only way the insurer has to calculate this kind of thing is to go on broad social factors. So, if you live in an area which has a high crime rate or you live in a house which has been broken into before then you are going to end up paying out more for your home contents insurance. Just the same as if you have a car that has been involved with accidents before then you will have to pay more for your car insurance premiums.

How well your home is secured will also affect how much you end up paying for your insurance. Whether there is a burglar alarm on the house, whether you have properly secured windows and doors and whether your property is adequately lit will also affect how much you end up paying. The more you can do to protect your house will affect how much you end up paying out and so it’s always best to arm yourself as much as possible. You obviously can’t do much about the crime rates in your local area but on a personal property level you can do quite a bit. You will have to fill in forms which detail all this type of information and, whilst you may be tempted to bend the truth a little bit in order to get cheaper premiums, you really should be completely honest with these questions and forms; you will only be found out and could lose all cover if you come to make a claim which you aren’t properly covered for.

Now onto the most important part, the actual contents which you have in your home. What you end up paying will depend on what you value the contents of your home as or whether or not you want to insure all your contents or just your most valuable ones. Some people choose to insure jewellery and electronic equipment whilst some people, perhaps in areas which are prone to flooding, decide that they should insure all their furniture as well. This is obviously down to personal preference and when talking to different insurers you could discuss what the best course of action could be for you in order to best protect your belongings. Different types of insurance will cover different belongings to different degrees and you need to be really clear about what you are signing- you don’t want to get caught out. Losing or damaging something in your home is always a bad experience but if you were to then find out that you didn’t actually have enough insurance to cover the damage then this could be even worse. Ultimately you need to read and reread any documents which you may have to sign and ensure that you are getting the cover which you feel you are.

Obviously, there are more specialist or different policies which you may wish to consider. If you have a young person in your home who may wish to be going to university then you may well find that your insurance can cover them as well once they move into university halls of residence however this is clearly something which you are going to have to discuss with your individual insurance provider. Also, if you have a special collection of something in your house, something which might be valuable, then you may wish to consider specialist insurance which will cover you if the worst should happen and your collection or collectables should be damaged. Specialist insurance will of course be much more expensive but it will ultimately save you money in the long run. Paying now will mean that you pay out much less in the future.