When you hear or read the words ‘home cover’, you will probably be thinking about home insurance in the traditional sense that protects your buildings and contents. However, home cover or home emergency cover protects against damage to specific areas of your home like drains, electrics and plumbing.
Home cover or home emergency cover protects your boiler, central heating, drains, electrics and plumbing against blockages, malfunctions and leaks. Like all household cover, it takes the worry out of faults developing in the major areas within your home.
Some traditional home insurance policies offer home emergency insurance as an additional insurance benefit. Whilst this may appear to be the easiest option (using one company and one policy), you should always check that the cost of the additional benefit is competitive. You can do this by comparing their home emergency insurance with bespoke home emergency cover packages on the market.
Another consideration is what happens if you make a claim? Does it affect the no-claims benefit on your entire home insurance policy? Claims on the individual home cover policy will only affect the cost of that policy.
Your home cover may be comprehensive but does it protect specific parts of your home? Just make sure you check for any exclusions before you sign up!
Home emergency cover – the costs
- Most home emergency cover packages; paid monthly or annually. It is probably cheaper to pay for your policy annually but better for the home budget to pay monthly.
- Home cover may have an additional call-out charge per visit, or an excess paid every time cover is used.
- Avoid the call-out charge or excess by opting for a £0 call out charge/excess. This will increase the cost of the overall policy. What you need to decide is how likely it is for you to use the policy more than once per year. Like all insurance cover, it is an assessment of risk. If you use home cover twice in a year for a call-out, you may be better off taking out the £0 call-out fee option. This way, you have peace of mind that there will be no additional costs.
- Some home cover packages offer discounts on boilers if the gas engineer is unable to make a suitable repair.
Important Information
Some providers offer insured plans to look after your Boiler and Heating and other home services like plumbing, drains and electrics, whereas other providers offer non-insured plans. An insured plan will be underwritten by an insurer and also regulated by the [Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)](https://www.fca.org.uk/). Non-insured plans are not backed by an insurer and are not regulated by the FCA. Often non-insured or maintenance plans include an annual service of the equipment covered, whereas these may or may not be included in insured plans.
