How To Reduce Your House Insurance Premium

By Author: Deshawn Chillo
Total Articles: 8
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House insurance is either one of two types of insurance products: buildings insurance or contents insurance. Buildings insurance protects the physical structure of your house, while contents insurance protects the moveable possessions within. There are some simple ways to ensure that you are not spending too much money on either of these insurance products.

Put simply, if you can reduce the risk of loss or damage to your property you can significantly lower the cost of your contents insurance premium. Securing your house is essential ? if necessary, upgrade by installing window locks. Also, check the locks on your doors. Exterior doors should be fitted with 5 lever mortise deadlocks. For more information about this, consult one of the major house insurance providers like The Co-Operative Insurance.

Smoke alarms and fire extinguishers reduce the risk of serious damage to your house, and so can also help to lower your house insurance premium ? and of course make your house a safer place in which to live. Your local fire department can be contacted for advice on fitting these devices. Make sure that you inform ...
... your insurance provider that you either have these devices, or that you have having them installed, and you should see a significant reduction in your house insurance premium.

Make sure that your buildings insurance policy covers the correct amount, and that you are not over insuring (and therefore paying too high a premium). Your buildings insurance should cover the cost of rebuilding your house in the event of a house fire, or subsidence. Your mortgage company may be able to advise you as to the re-build value of your property, or this may be included in the deeds to the property.

Similar considerations apply to contents insurance. You want to cover the cost of replacing your contents, but there is no point in over exaggerating this figure, as you will pay a higher premium year on year. The cost of replacing your contents can be worked out by making an itinerary of all your possessions ? it is probably easiest to do this room by room, finally compiling a grand total. You can then look online at the cost of replacing these goods and then pass this on to your prospective house insurance provider.

As well as looking at buying your buildings and contents insurance as one package, you should also shop around for individual buildings and contents insurance policies, as some companies may be cheap for one type of insurance, but less competitive for the other. There are no hard and fast rules about this, however, as some providers offer a good discount for when buying combined packages ? The Co-operative Insurance, for example, offer a 1/3 off when you buy buildings and contents insurance together.

Shop around for your house insurance product. Generally speaking, it is probably best to avoid taking house insurance from your mortgage provider, as many of the large house insurance providers like the Co Operative Insurance can offer much more competitive buildings and contents insurance cover than the mortgage companies.

Follow up your shopping around by haggling with your prospective house insurance provider. If you like the type of cover provided by a particular policy, but have seen a similar policy cheaper elsewhere, don''t be shy about informing your potential house insurance provider of the competition ? in many cases they may be able to adjust the premium to better or match the competition.

Don''t be afraid to play different companies off against each other ? in many cases they may be able to adjust the premium to better or match the competition, and you will start to see a domino effect the more providers you contact with your steadily decreasing quotes from competitors. Deshawn Chillo is the author of this article. Make sure you have the right house insurance and car insurance policy with The Co-Operative Insurance.