We’ve got contents insurance with AA and from next year we’ll be paying 33% more. We have had 2 claims for a different policy this year, one at fault, one not, and they said it wouldn’t impact our premiums. Is this common for everyone? I understand it goes up because of all the floods, but 33% is very significant.
Hmm ours went up about 15% during the year, but not 30%. We aren’t in a flood zone, though (our neighbours house would have water at the ceiling before water was at our floor).
As I’ve mentioned before, we keep all our excesses as high as we can so if they are accounting for more small claims then that might not affect us so much.
Yeah think it makes sense with big ticket items like houses and contents. With vehicles, we’ve got relatively cheap cars and then it’s nice to have lower excess. Financially it may not be the best option, but peace of mind knowing that any scratch costs max 500 is nice too.
We are lucky to be in a position that the higher excesses (normally $1k-2k from memory) won’t cause us financial stress. Even if lots of things go bad at once, it will hurt but won’t be damaging long term, just make it take longer to pay off the mortgage.
I guess I just hate paperwork more than I want the coverage, claiming on insurance is not something I want to do, so I put excesses higher to avoid it. Peace of mind for me is knowing I don’t have to spend several days arguing with the insurance company over $500 😆. We sometimes spend that much at the supermarket! (Though having a few of those prompted me to buy a lot more from the weekend markets, so it hasn’t actually happened for a while).
Yeah the excess would be fine with us as well. My experience with smaller claims is that it’s quick and easy, had 2 claims <$3k and they were approved quickly.
The current damage to our car is roughly $20k so that’s a different story.