Your home is likely to be the biggest asset you will ever have, so protecting it against disaster is essential.

 Indeed, if you have a mortgage you won't even have a choice - your lender will require you to have home insurance to cover the cost of rebuilding your home in the event of a fire or other critical damage.

Even so, you are not obliged to insure through them. You are entitled to make your own arrangements very often making significant savings.

This is particularly beneficial through brokers such as ourselves.

 As with any home insurance policy, careful consideration must be given to assessing the correct amount of cover required. In the event of under-insurance a claim could be averaged (this will reduce the size of any payment) or even refused.

Buildings Insurance

Buildings insurance protects the structure of your home, as well as permanent fixtures and fittings such as baths, toilets and fitted kitchens, bedroom cupboards and interior decorations.  You should get enough house insurance cover to pay for the cost of rebuilding your home, which may bear no relation to the actual resale value of your home.

Contents Insurance

To get cover for your household possessions such as televisions, videos, carpets, and furniture, you’ll need to consider contents insurance. Most policies will cover you for fire, flood and theft but you can also take out cover for accidental damage, such as if you spill a drink down the back of your TV!

To work out how much cover you need, it is sensible to take an inventory of your possessions. Simply go from room to room and write down all the items in it. Then work out how much it would cost to replace each item on your list. Add it all up and you’ll have a very good idea of just how much contents cover you’ll need.

Particular items may need to be insured separately as most home insurance policies will have limits on payouts on individual items. Jewellery or expensive electrical equipment may fall into this category.