The UK Insurance Blog

According to an interesting article in easier.com  about student thefts, nearly two million students will soon unwittingly become targets of thieves. This is a message going out to students as well as their parents.

Autumn, this year, universities in the United Kingdom will welcome one million six hundred thousand new students to their halls of residences. These students will have with them items with a collective value of at least one and a half thousand pounds which ought to be covered by an adequate insurance plan. If the unthinkable was to occur, insurance reimbursement will soften the blow.

According to esure, students are expected to bring with them favourite gadgets and toys of a considerable value. The message of the article was essentially to get adequate insurance cover in case of theft or loss.

I would think it extremely rare that any students out there do not possess at least an expensive mobile phone and a laptop. According to esure, at least 81 per cent of students will take with them to uni a mobile phone while 74% will be taking a laptop. With all the latest hi-tec valuables in your possession, it makes sense to exercise extra care especially when changing to some less familiar surroundings.

When packing for university, if you plan to include a laptop, a mobile, a games console, a camera or a DVD player because you can’t imagine life without them, you had better check out where you stand with your insurance.

The value of new clothes and jewellery can mount up too, especially if, according to demographic statistics by esure, you are a fashionable northerner. They anticipate that trendy students from the north will have packed a suitcase with an average of £600 worth of fashion items. Get it all insured!

If you are a parent of a ‘student-to-be’ and you haven’t even thought of getting insurance cover for your child’s valuables, don’t worry, you are not on your own. Twenty four percent of parents never even consider taking out insurance for their child’s possessions when they head off for university.

I guess, the overlying message is simple enough, that of to ‘be-ware and be sensible’. The trouble with high value gadgets, is that they tend to be small and pocket-sized. They can be stolen really easily and efficiently. For this reason, watch out who you let into your rooms, especially if a new friend has brought company in the shape of a complete stranger. You can’t have eyes everywhere so ensure your valuables are hidden well away from opportunistic attention. Or leave the really expensive valuables behind, at home, at least until you get to know your way round a bit better.

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In the article “The one that got away”  fishermen are being warned they need to protect their tackle kit.

A fact that has been recently highlighted during National Fishing Week was that fishermen are easy targets for thieves. The UK’s beloved and most favourite of all participatory sporting activities, fishing, a hobby or pastime that is often spent in seclusion, has come to the recent attention of thieves. Seeing nothing in their way to prevent them from helping themselves to valuable fishing gear, they are taking advantage of the fact that fishing gear is expensive and valuable gear. A fishing rod can cost anywhere between £100 and £2000 while specialist carp fishing reels, nets and lines can cost up to £3,000.

A fact that was highlighted during the recent National Fishing Week was that fishermen are being targeted for their valuable fishing gear, totalling a ‘net’ worth of thousands.

Night fishing, increasing in popularity all the time is providing thieves and muggers with ample opportunity to take advantage of lone fishermen. As a result this kind of crime appears to be increasing alongside the sport’s rate of popularity. Crime related to fishing, in fact, has increased by 17% with the most frequent type of crime being theft of fishing tackle.

As a response to this increase in fishing crime, one of the UK’s leading insurance providers suggests we check our policies and ensure there is a personal possessions extension (all risks) which will cover us for any personal effects or sporting equipment we carry or wear.

The article “Brits leave personal goods unattended in holiday homes” highlights the fact that holiday home owners are leaving valuable belongings unattended at their own risk.

Our holiday homes are not secure! Containing collectively, over £6.3 billion worth of personal possessions and valuables, it comes as a surprise to learn that holiday home protection is not adequately provided for.

The company Zurich Private Clients are observing a pattern where their affluent clients are being targeted for burglary even when they are occupying their second homes. It seems a popular trick is to release gas into the air con system so that they can steal valuables without the victims resisting.

People with second homes are not paying attention to insurance. About one in ten have no contents insurance for their holiday home and eleven percent have claimed they have no idea if their insurance is adequate.

Holiday home owners, for some reason, seem to be a little cavalier about their security arrangements. Basic practices like fitting locks on the windows are being ignored. Don’t tell anyone, but 6% have admitted to no security at all. The message the insurance companies want to put out is that even though a holiday home is secondary their security protection should be afforded just as much attention as their first home.

They are left empty for the majority of the year, sometimes for months at a time. Two thirds of people with holiday homes claim to visit them no more often than every three months. Although offering out the holiday home to friends and relatives, many of these holiday-homers admit their homes quite often remain empty for at least a month at a time. When holiday homes in Britain have contents to the average value of £15,200, it comes as a big surprise that they have such a slap dash attitude to their belongings. Despite this however, when quizzed they claimed they were worried about the security of their holiday home, particularly of local crime and their empty house being targeted by criminals.

Never before has property been at a premium for the buyers of the UK holiday home market. Apparently, we can’t get enough! Even if we haven’t the time to enjoy our second properties for more than twice a year, we still can’t resist investing in them!

These holiday-homers – they just don’t seem to get enough! Around 18% of holiday home owners are actively seeking more properties and forty seven per cent of these are ready to purchase in 2008.

Countries that are the most popular with purchasers of holiday homes are France and Spain (24% and 26% respectively). Other destinations moving up the ranks include Cyprus and Bulgaria. Twenty five per cent of people who are hoping to buy a holiday home in the near future are thinking about purchasing somewhere in the United Kingdom. Half the holiday home buyers are hoping to find their dream home on the continent while twenty five per cent want to find somewhere outside of Europe.

Getting ready for Festival Season? Make sure you are insured! An article by Zurich Finance states that the last thing festival goers tend to think of when planning a trip, is purchasing contents insurance. Seventy five per cent of festival goers do not take out any kind of insurance when attending an event.

Speaking from experience, festival people are more likely to lose a mobile phone or an MP3, states Zurich Finance. Goods up to the value of £3 billion are expected to be put at risk at music festivals throughout the summer. The article discussed the merits of a music event as a target for thieves. People attending an annual music festival tend to go armed with mobile phones, digital cameras, iPods and MP3 players. Overall then (including any cash people may have on them for the weekend) individuals have items amounting to a collective value of about £260!

People take risks with their possessions leaving personal and valuable items in tents while they wander off for a few hours or they carry phones in their back pockets where they can easily be stolen.

Insurance companies recommend that anyone attending a festival should think seriously and get some insurance cover protecting items against theft, loss and damage. Additionally, they advise that you should leave all debit and credit cards tucked away safely at home (ensuring that you have home and contents insurance). Get yourself equipped with personal possessions insurance for protection of all that you have brought with you to the festival. If you must bring very valuable items with you, check out the availability of a secure lock-up.

When surveyed, one in ten people had personal items stolen at a live music venue or event. Spare a thought for losing YOUR favourite bits and pieces. If you don’t insure your trusted mobile phone, camera or iPod, you are very likely to regret it later on.

What with all the Big Brother 9 mayhem going on, at times you’d be forgiven for wondering how much the Big Brother house costs to insure. An article published recently in PR Web shines a little light on the matter.

This is one unpredictable house. You never know what’s going to go wrong. One thing you are sure of, that something WILL go wrong! Furniture often gets wrecked, accidents happen and tomfoolery is at its worst as the world sits back in its favourite armchair and watches the foolhardy shenanigans of the Big Brother housemates. To all intents and purposes the contents of the house are designer label or specially crafted for the year’s intake, so what would the creators have to pay out for house insurance. In the article, ‘Confused dot com’ provide some answers.

One positive point is that flooding is not a problem, despite all efforts by the raucous inmates. The location of the famed Big Brother house is beside the Elstree film studio water tank where Moby Dick was filmed. There is not likely to be any flooding, so no flood risk added to the insurance cover. Good start.

Smoking is not allowed in the Big Brother 9 house, so it’s a home insurance quote for a non-smoking household. In actuality, the local council defines the Big Brother house a place of work, in which case, if a contestant was to smoke indoors, the programme would have to fork out £2,500 each time it happens.

The security of the Big Brother house is not a problem. While many houses rely on a security alarm system, window locks and double locks galore, the BB house has 24 hour seven days a week security monitoring via CCTV as well as security guards and dogs.

Contents insurance is set at an amount much less than normal at £50,000. In the Big Brother house, there are no accumulated personal items although furniture and appliances are usually top notch expensive items.

To top it all off, Big Brother’s building is insured for £500,000 which is equal to the build value.

All in all, things could be a lot worse for the money people at Big Brother!

An interesting piece in yesterday’s Telegraph talking about how easy it is forget that the contents of our houses increases over time. They’re reporting that it’s not unusual for claims adjusters to reduce a claim by as much as 50% simply because the contents of the house were underinsured. They state that “Figures published by Abbey last year show that 257,000 of all home insurance policies, across both building and contents cover, were declined as a result of underinsurance.” I can’t believe that the claims were totally disallowed, the normal procedure is to reduce the claim by the percentage of under valuation. Thus if I take out contents insurance that provides cover for £30,000 and the insurance assessor value the contents of the house at £60,000 then you should only expect to be paid half of the amount that you claim.

The article also points out that there is a wide difference in the blanket cover (i.e. the contents not individually valued and listed) offered by the leading insurance companies. Direct Line’s basic policy offers £15,000 of unspecified item cover whereas More Than has the limit set at £75,000. Once more it’s telling us that we should research all insurance cover before making a final choice. Product loyalty is often misplaced, one company could have the best value car insurance whereas their home insurance sucks…always take a few minutes to do some research. You’ll find a wide choice of insurers on the home insurance pages of the website.

An article from the Press Association tells us that Halifax Home Insurance have come up with some startling facts about home restoration projects. It seems that almost three million rooms have vanished over the past five years as homeowners knock down walls to create open-plan living space. An estimated 2.9 million rooms have been knocked into adjoining ones in the past five years, while plans are being made for a further 2.1 million homes to lose at least one room this year, according to the Halifax research.

The most popular wall to knock down is that between the dining room and the living room, with many people believing that the traditional dining room is part of a bygone era. The days of the whole family sitting around a dining table adorned with the best china whilst tucking into roast beef and yorkshire pudding seem to be gone for good. It seems that people now prefer the extra living space that joining the two rooms brings.

Estimations show that a further 590,000 dining rooms will be destroyed this year to create bigger kitchens or lounges and that the traditional standalone dining room could be extinct by 2020.

Larger living areas are also being created by knocking through the walls between living room and hallway or getting rid of utility rooms or studies to get bigger lounges, kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms.

The worrying point about all this alteration work is that one in four people are planning to knock down walls themselves rather than employ a tradesman. At the same time half of people who carry out work don’t realise that they have to inform their insurer that the number of rooms is about to change, and that failing to do so could invalidate their house insurance.

David Rochester, head of underwriting at Halifax Home Insurance, said: “Britons have clearly fallen for open-plan living and are looking at ways in which they can make better use of the space inside their homes. Not only do we urge homeowners to make sure a qualified person carries out any structural work to their home, we also recommend seeking the advice of a qualified structural engineer before progressing work to knock down any walls.”

We’ve all seen the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil gets in a local firm of cheap builders to knock down a wall, only to find that they’ve removed a major retaining wall and the whole place is likely to collapse at any moment. Nobody is suggesting that such a farce could take place in your home but insurance companies get hundreds of claims each year for collapsed ceilings etc that are the result of people taking down the “wrong” wall, and the insurance companies simply don’t pay out on those claims, so be warned.