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Why your home insurance claim will be rejected

Thu, 03/01/2013 - 11:08am

With the prices of home insurance on the up after a very wet summer (not a rarity in the UK), everyone is starting to wonder what claims will actually be accepted by insurers. Axa Insurance surveyed homeowners to find out how many of them actually misunderstand what their homes are actually covered for. The main misconception amongst homeowners revolves around the idea that you’re able to claim even if the cause of fire/water damage or any other incident was as a result of a lack of maintenance.

Fire claims

One startling statistic Axa found is that 58% of homeowners believed you could claim for fire damage if the cause was an unswept chimney – this is not true. Additionally, 53% also thought that a fire caused by old or faulty wiring would be covered by their home insurance. Anyone claiming for this could end up very disappointed to find that their claim is rejected. The obvious conclusion from these findings is to ensure your chimney is swept regularly and wiring is as modern as possible.

Structural damage

It was found that 61% of people wrongly thought they could claim on their home insurance if a wall or ceiling collapsed as a result of neglected cracks. As well as this, 21% were surprised to find they couldn’t claim if their walls were damaged by untended climbing plants. To avoid these unfortunate things happening to you, it may be worth contacting your own building surveyor and get quotes from builders to enable a second opinion and perhaps have the work done faster.

Maintain your homes

Axa found that a staggering 51% of homeowners believe their insurance will pay out for all weather-related claims regardless of the cause. In reality however, all claims that were caused by lack of maintenance will be rejected. Another fact uncovered was that 25% of homeowners have suffered some sort of damage from flooding, strong winds or snow, including collapsed roofs and guttering.

Relating to maintenance, from the research Axa carried out, they found that 31% have not checked the state of their roof in the last 5 years, whereas 11% never have at all! Additionally, 59% had not cleared their guttering in the last 3 years, when 24% never have!

From this research, it seems clear that it is important to firstly maintain your home. To avoid any claim mix-ups it’s important for the damage not to be traced back to the customer’s fault. Moreover, it is important to keep your insurer up to date with the state of your home/any changes etc.