Does your home insurance policy include home emergency insurance?

It might be worth checking to avoid a big pay out if you aren’t covered

With temperatures hitting -13C in parts of the UK already this December, the last thing you want is for your boiler to stop working at the point of desperately needing it, or your water pipes bursting after a heavy frost. What you need to check is whether your home insurance policy includes a form of home emergency insurance or accidental damage cover should the worst happen. If not, then you might find yourself paying too much to have it fixed.

There are many advantages of having home emergency insurance included with your policy or as an additional policy, especially during the winter months when it really comes into its own. In the event of burst pipes, blocked drains or failure of your heating system, the policy will help to fix these issues often within a few hours of being reported.

If you find that your policy doesn’t include boiler breakdown cover you could be faced with a big bill, as well as the inconvenience of being without heating and hot water when you most need it. Less than a quarter of home insurance policies cover boiler breakdown and other winter emergencies as standard, leaving households out in the cold if something goes wrong.

A new boiler is likely to set you back in the region of £2,000 and could take over a day to install, but you might also be waiting some time during the busy winter months for an engineer to be available. If you have an older boiler, you need to get it regularly serviced and maintained to limit the chances of something going wrong.

Steve Rayner, General Insurance Channel Manager from Payingtoomuch.com said: “It can be beneficial to get additional cover for your home if the policy doesn’t include boiler breakdown. If you don’t have any cover and have an emergency in your property, you could be facing a huge bill, not to mention the inconvenience of having no emergency support. It is better to have this cover if your property is older as the pipes and boiler might be at risk."

If your home insurance policy is due for renewal or you would like to make changes to your existing policy to include home emergency cover, then contact payingtoomuch.com on 01243 219333.

Sample Quote*

*Based on 3-bedroom semi-detached house in Doncaster DN5 9HT for full accidental damage cover on Contents and Buildings.