Home insurance companies are having a laugh, but if you don’t query your renewal quote, then the joke is on you.
Yes, hitting that annual ‘Renew Now’ button emailed out to you is easy, but the price quoted is rarely the best deal.
And next year’s renewal quote will just build on that bad deal again. You can either roll over and accept the annual increases, or take back control. Here’s how.
Savings?
Are there really savings to be made on home insurance? Yes there are, and I’ll give five years’ worth of examples from one homeowner.
In 2021, the owner of a four-bed detached house in Wicklow paid €345 for house insurance. A big factor in home insurance pricing is the cost of rebuilding your home should the worst happen. His estimated rebuild cost then was €382,000.
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By 2025, the renewal quote he was given, for the unchanged house, had risen to €577 – that’s a €232 increase in four years. Yes, construction costs have risen – Covid, the war in Ukraine, high energy prices and supply-chain issues are tripped off as the rationale for price creep in too many aspects of our lives – but must consumers shoulder them alone?
The job of a business is to make money for shareholders, so accountants and marketers will try to pass on as much of the cost increases as they can get away with to consumers. But an average €58-a-year increase in a home insurance premium is big by any measure.
Consumers have a choice to absorb the price increase for shareholders by hitting ‘Renew’ on their annual quote, or not.
Mad as hell
But back to our homeowner. Yes, the renewal price he was offered in 2025 was high – and reader, he didn’t accept it – but it would likely have been far higher had he not haggled and shopped around in the intervening years.
When his policy came up for renewal in 2022, the homeowner received a renewal quote of €353, a modest €8 increase on the previous year.
Conscious that construction costs were rising, and fearful that his estimated €382,000 rebuild cost might now be too low, he phoned his insurer. A brief phone haggle saw the premium drop to €319, this was below what he paid in 2021, while he got his rebuild cover increased to €450,000.
That one phone call meant a €34 saving on his premium with rebuild cover increased by €70,000.
At renewal time in June 2023, his renewal quote shot up again, this time by €100 to €419.
He phoned other providers, but the best alternative, through a supermarket loyalty programme, was more again at €509. He decided to accept the €419 renewal quote offered.
Come June 2024, he was quoted a renewal figure of €570, a jump of €151. He managed to bargain his insurer down to €536.
By this year, the renewal quote offered had risen to €577. Trawling two comparison websites didn’t yield anything better. Disappointingly, both churned out quotes of more than €600.
Instead he phoned his insurer. That single phone call saw their renewal quote drop to €489, a saving of €88.
Costs are creeping up all around us. Companies are using ever more clever ways to mask increases. Technology is making it easiest for time-pressed consumers to accept automatic renewals, and harder for us to speak to someone to query a quote.
If you’re tired of everything costing more, and everything being hard, you could make home insurance your: “I’m-mad-as-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-this-any-more” moment to claw things back.
Be a new customer
For years, home and car insurance customers have paid a price for loyalty. Customers who stayed with the same home insurer for nine years or more ended up paying 32 per cent more than one renewing for the first time, according to a Central Bank report published in 2021.
‘Price walking’, where consumers are charged higher premiums the longer they remain with an insurance provider, has been outlawed in Ireland since July 2022.
The new rules mean insurers aren’t able to charge existing customers a higher premium on renewal than any other customers with the same risk profile who have been with the insurer for a year or more.
But incentives for new customers are still allowed. So it pays to be a new customer – that means negotiating with your existing provider like a new customer, or calling other providers.
The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), provides a useful checklist for mining home insurance discounts.
Is the person applying over 40? Does someone over 50 live there? Is someone usually there during the day? Are the residents non-smoking? These things can make a difference to your premium. If the insurer doesn’t mention these things, ask them.
Does your house have an alarm? Is it monitored? Is the house more than 10 years old? Have you made any claims in the past three years? Do you have security locks on the doors and windows, or do you live in a neighbourhood watch area? These factors may make your house a less risky bet for an insurer. Having a smoke detector can help, too.
If your car insurance is with that provider you might get a discount too. It’s worth having that policy number to hand.
You may be able to get a discount on your premium if you agree to higher excess, too. This is the amount you pay towards any claim before your insurer pays the balance. It’s normally between €100 and €500 for standard claims, so figure out what you are comfortable with.
Burst pipes, damaged by freezing, are the single most common cause of home insurance claims, making up one in three claims 2024, according to Allianz.
Storm damage, at 28 per cent, was the second-most-common claim. Knocking over the telly, spilling paint on carpets – accidents in the home made up 18 per cent of home insurance claims.
Fire and theft, at 10 per cent and 5 per cent respectively, accounted for fewer claims – but they do happen.
Cheapest isn’t always better
Getting the cheapest home insurance isn’t always a win, of course.
If you’re underinsured, a bargain quote can be a costly mistake.
“In the event of a total or partial loss from fire for example, homeowners need to make sure they are covered for reinstating or rebuilding,” says chartered quantity surveyor Kevin Brady of the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI).
The good news is that the rate of increase of rebuild costs has moderated significantly compared with 2022, according to SCSI figures published in November.
When shopping for insurance quotes, the SCSI’s house rebuilding calculator is useful to estimate the rebuilding costs of your home. The minimum base cost of rebuilding a three-bed semi, the most common house type in the county, is €312,620 in Dublin, according to the calculator.
The minimum base cost of rebuilding a similar house in the northwest is €247,744 – a difference of close to €65,000.
Calculating the correct reinstatement cost of your house based on its type and location means you are less likely to pay more or less for home insurance than you should.
An important point is that, while building costs have increased, it doesn’t mean premiums should increase on a pro-rata basis, says Brady.
“Some insurers are now auto-adjusting insurance policies on an annual basis and homeowners need to satisfy themselves that any quotes they receive are aligned with current rebuild rates.” Mr Brady said.
So use an independent calculator.
“It’s really important for homeowners to put aside ten minutes to get an accurate reinstatement figure,” says Brady.
They should then shop around for best insurance quotes based on this figure.
Increasing your rebuild cover won’t necessarily increase your premium either. That’s why it’s a no-brainer. A small bit of leg work can mean more appropriate cover, and it may even reduce your premium.
‘Average’ clause
Being underinsured is bad if your house needs to be rebuilt – but it’s also a pain for smaller events. The “average clause” in policies means that if you underinsure your property, your claim payout will be reduced proportionally to the amount you’re underinsured.
So the amount your claim is settled for will be reduced by the same percentage you are underinsured by.
Take Mary – she has her home insured for €180,000. The cost to fully rebuild her home is €300,000. This means her home is underinsured by €120,000, or 40 per cent.
A fire in Mary’s kitchen will cost €10,000 to repair, but because she is underinsured by 40 per cent, a deduction of 40 per cent is made to her claim for repairs. The most she will receive in a claim is €6,000.
“This is something many homeowners may not be aware of,” says Kevin Hollingsworth of the SCSI. “The onus is solely on the policyholder to maintain an accurate sum of insurance.
“It’s also important that homeowners reassess their cover to take account of any changes such as home office extensions or garden offices and to include them in their house insurance too.”
