Home insurance

You can call us on 0345 165 0900 to make changes to your policy. We won't charge you a fee to make changes.

You can also see and download your policy documents on your online account. If you haven't registered for an online account yet, you can do so here.

Here's how to get in touch:

• Use the Virtual Assistant on this page for help with your query.
• Use our contact us form to send us a message anytime.
• Give us a call on one of the telephone numbers you can can find on our contact us page. 

Home insurance is designed to help protect you in case of damage or loss caused by an insured event to a property you own, the contents of your home or both.

By paying a monthly or annual premium, you’ll be able to claim for the costs of repairing or replacing things in your home if something goes wrong, provided they're covered by the terms of your insurance policy.

What’s covered under a home insurance depends on the type of policy you have.

Buildings insurance covers the cost of repairing damage to the structure of your home caused by insured events, up to the cost of rebuilding the house from scratch. It includes things like:

• Walls and roofs
• Floors
• Windows and doors
• Permanent fixtures and fittings, like bathroom suites and kitchens
• Some external structures, like garages and outbuildings.
  
  

Contents insurance covers the cost of repairing or replacing the contents in your home if they're damaged in an insured event. It usually includes:

• Soft furnishings
• Furniture
• White goods
• Electronic goods
• Clothes
• Money and jewellery (usually up to a certain value).
  
  

Most insurers provide cover for damage or loss caused by a number of perils, such as fire, vandalism, storm, flood, theft and subsidence.

You are also likely to be given the option to purchase a combined policy that covers both contents and buildings. They will also often offer some optional cover that you can add to a home insurance policy, including things like home emergency cover and legal expenses cover.

Before you take out home insurance, you’ll need to determine what level of cover you need.

You can then shop around for quotes online. When you start a quote, insurers will need you to provide some details about yourself, any other occupants in your home, the home itself and how you use it, in order to calculate if they can offer you a quote and at what price.

Once you have a policy in place, if you need to make a home insurance claim, you will need to get in touch with your insurer and provide as much information as possible about what happened. They will then process your claim and either arrange and pay for works or provide funds to repair your home or replace your possessions, provided you're covered for that type of damage or loss under your policy.

If you’re a homeowner, it’s a good idea to consider having both buildings and contents insurance, to ensure both your property and its contents are protected. It may also be a condition of your mortgage that you take out a buildings insurance policy.

Contents insurance is not a requirement, but it’s also worth considering it, whether you're a homeowner or a tenant. Contents cover can protect you in the event of damage or loss to the contents in your home, that's been caused by an insured peril. If you do decide to take out a policy, bear in mind that you will have to provide the insurer with the full replacement value of the contents of your home, if they were to be replaced as new.

If buildings insurance is a requirement as part of your mortgage agreement or you've decided to take out a policy anyway, you’ll want to ensure you have it in place for when the exchange of contracts happens. 

Contents insurance is not normally a requirement of your mortgage agreement and, if you decide to get it, it doesn’t need to kick in until you move your possessions into the home. However, you may find it's easier and cheaper to take out both buildings and contents cover together in one policy.

It’s never nice to think about, but unforeseen things can happen in your home, and it's important to be prepared.

If your home were to be affected by something like theft, fire or flooding, you could be left with a hefty bill to put things right. That's where insurance can help. By having home insurance cover in place, you get peace of mind knowing that these types of costs should largely be covered if something happens.

You can get a home insurance quote online either directly on an insurer’s website or through one of the available comparison websites. In either case, you should have as much information as possible to hand about yourself, your home and your belongings, as insurers will need it to determine whether they can offer you a quote and what the price of your premium will be.

If you would like to see how Ageas could help with your home insurance, take a look at our policy booklet or get a quote for our home insurance online today.