Published on : Thu, 15 Sep 2005 15:04GMT
by : Sadat Sayeed

Rushing into decisions regarding home insurance could be really costing dear to consumers, according to latest reports by Post Office Home Insurance.

The new research stated that people were quite unaware of the availability of better deals in the market, besides being indifferent towards making efforts to opt out of their earlier schemes and switching to more lucrative plans. Post Office Home Insurance said that this uncertainty and indifference amongst customers was only favouring mortgage lenders, who could now take greater undue advantage of unaware and rather vulnerable homeowners looking for home protection.

In fact, same was the case with people living on rent as hardly one in eleven customers bothered to make sure while renewing their policies every year if the rates offered to them were the best in the market.

Commenting on the issue, Claire Oldstein, the head of home insurance said that in spite of certain modifications to the concerned law six years ago that protected homeowners from being exploited by lenders in purchasing home insurance, “nearly half of consumers still seem to be doing so. Mortgage providers don’t always offer the best value for money when it comes to home insurance, so it really is wise to explore other options.”

The study proved at least four consumers in ten depending on their mortgage providers for their home insurance, albeit prospects of getting about 40 per cent cheaper deals outside.

Meanwhile, another research by esure.com saw people housing expensive objects and appliances in their homes, along with a widespread tendency for them to underestimate the worth of their houses and thereby placing crucial issues like home and contents insurance right down their ‘to do’ list. Therefore, people were found possessing about $4.1 billion of valuable items that had been uninsured, since a majority of the population abstained from raising their insurance amount when they bought costly products.

Post Office’s survey on unawareness towards home insurance corresponds to its introduction of “Post Office Insurance Sale” that offers a £25 discount on home insurance policies till the end of this month, i.e. 30th September, 2005.