Struggling to find the right policy for your home? When you're shopping around it's worth considering the type of cover you'll need for your home.
We're here to help with tips on comparing home insurance.
Buildings insurance
Buildings insurance provides cover for the physical fabric of your home – and its fixtures and fittings – against events like fire, storm and flood. If you're buying a house your mortgage provider will likely insist that you have buildings cover.
If you're worried about accidental damage to your home, look for a policy that can cover this. Accidental damage cover can easily be added to our buildings Insurance, and is included as standard with our Platinum buildings insurance.
For unforseen household emergencies, like a burst pipe, you can add home emergency cover to our insurance. This gives you a 24-hour helpline, and we'll pay up to £500 (including VAT) towards the cost of repairs, following an insured event. Our Platinum buildings insurance comes with home emergency cover as standard.
A combined buildings and contents policy may be cheaper than buying separate insurance for buildings and contents. But it's still worth comparing combined and separate policies when shopping around.
Contents insurance
Contents insurance generally covers your furniture and furnishings, household goods, home entertainment equipment, clothing, and personal possessions and valuables, up to a stated limit.
Our home contents calculator can help you work out the level of cover you need to replace your possessions.
As with buildings insurance, look for a policy that can meet all your requirements. Our Platinum contents insurance comes with accidental damage cover included, plus cover for personal possessions away from home.
Finding a good home insurance deal
When comparing insurance quotes from different providers, make a list of what is and isn't covered by each policy, then make a like-for-like price comparison. Also, have a look at the excesses for each policy too.
If you're looking for buildings insurance, it's important to work out how much it would cost to rebuild your home from scratch. Then check whether a policy covers the cost of rebuilding your home.
Our home insurance is rated on the number of bedrooms in your property, which has the advantage that you won't need to tell us the re-build value of your house.
Insurance price comparison websites
Price comparison websites can be useful for looking at several quotes at once. To get a fair comparison among the premiums, it's important to consider the policy benefits and any excesses that apply to each one.
Getting you the right quote
To find you the lowest premium, we compare home insurance quotes from a specially selected panel of leading insurance providers in the UK.
So whether you're looking for separate buildings and contents policies, or a combined buildings and contents policy, we can help you to find a great deal, tailored to your needs.
Author: The AA. Published 21 December 2016. Updated 6 June 2024.