What is home insurance?
Home insurance is a type of insurance product that protects your property and your belongings.
There are three main types of home insurance: buildings insurance, contents insurance and policies that combine both.
How do I find the best home insurance?
Finding the right home insurance is far from easy, whether it's comparing differing cover levels, excesses or exclusions. Picking the wrong policy could prove disastrous should the worst happen.
Which? is here to help. Not only do we rigorously analyse the quality of contents insurance and buildings insurance policies from dozens of home insurers, we also gather feedback from thousands of real customers who've actually claimed on their home insurance.
As well as using our reviews to find the best cover, you can use our tips to save money:
Don't just renew
Customers that simply let their policies roll into renewal pay more than those that don't.
In other words - whether you're thinking about switching or want to stay put - you should assume that the figure in your renewal letter isn't final.
Take 10 minutes to run a quote on a comparison site. This will give you an indication of what your insurer's rivals are prepared to offer.
Haggle
Negotiating a cheaper insurance price isn't a dark art - it can be as simple as ringing your insurer up and asking if they can do better than the renewal offer.
If you've shopped around, you'll be able to give examples of deals you've seen elsewhere.
Find out more: See our haggling script, and other price-reducing tips
Calculate how much you need to cover
To ensure you have the right cover, it's worth having a precise idea of how much you need to insure.
Find out the rebuild price of your property (this will be lower than the value). The Association of British Insurers provides a free-to-use calculator to help you estimate this.
The same goes for the combined cost of your contents. Our contents calculator can help you tally up the value of your possessions.
Set the right excess
One way to reduce the price of your insurance is to increase your voluntary excess. But be mindful that this is a comprise, and effectively reduces your cover.
When choosing your excess, consider how much of a claim you could comfortably afford to pay yourself.
Try the specialists
Not all of us live in 'typical' circumstances or conventional properties. If your home has a thatched roof, a history of subsidence or is of unusual construction you may need to stray off the beaten track to find reasonably-priced cover.
There are insurers and brokers that specialise in particular types of risk - so it's worth including them in your search. The British Insurance Broker's Association's website has a 'Find Insurance' tool and a helpline (0370 950 1790) for this purpose.
You can find more tips on getting cheap home insurance in our guide.
Our short video explains how to get the right home insurance in three easy steps.
Best and worst home insurance companies
We use our customer survey and policy analysis to rank home insurance companies.
The top-scoring providers will be awarded Which? Recommended Provider status, if they have met certain conditions:
- Be regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority
- Be available to the general public
- Have received responses from 30 or more customers in our customer survey
- Must achieve a high score in our Customer Satisfaction survey.
- Must also achieve average or above Policy Scores for Buildings and Contents
This list, ranked by total score, contains only those home insurers we were able to rate for both policies and customer experience. Therefore a number of insurers aren't included.
- Full list of contents insurance policies compared
- Full list of buildings insurance policies compared
Which? members can login to see the results of our analysis. If you're not already a member, join Which? and get full access to these results and all our reviews.
| Brand | Customer Score | Buildings Score | Contents Score | Total Score | Clarity of Policy | Dealing with queries | Value for money |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 85% | 73% | 72% | 79% | | | |
|
| 78% | 72% | 69% | 74% | | | |
|
| 78% | 72% | 69% | 74% | | | |
|
| 79% | 67% | 66% | 73% | | | |
|
| 71% | 77% | 68% | 72% | | | |
|
| 70% | 72% | 70% | 71% | | | |
|
| 75% | 68% | 63% | 70% | | | |
|
| 77% | 65% | 61% | 70% | | | |
|
| 73% | 67% | 62% | 69% | | | |
|
| 73% | 67% | 61% | 69% | | | |
|
| 70% | 65% | 63% | 67% | | | |
|
| 71% | 59% | 59% | 65% | | | |
|
| 70% | 62% | 57% | 65% | | | |
|
| 65% | 66% | 62% | 65% | | | - |
|
| 67% | 62% | 54% | 63% | | | |
|
| 64% | 62% | 57% | 62% | | | |
|
| 67% | 59% | 53% | 62% | | | |
Table notes: Customer score data based on a survey of 1,686 policyholders who have recently made a home insurance claim between November and December 2020.
Policy scores are based on the provider's standard policy.
Customer score is calculated using a combination of overall satisfaction and the likelihood of recommending the provider.
Average customer score is 72%. Average policy score for standard buildings policies is 65%. Average policy score for standard contents policies is 61%. Average total score is 69%
''-" represents where we have insufficient sample size (less than 30) to generate a star rating. Insurers must have a minimum sample size of 30 for inclusion in the table.
Customer score sample size: NFU Mutual (58), LV (90), Direct Line (106), Saga (49), Barclay's Bank (43), Churchill (54), More Than (31), AXA (115), Tesco Bank (36), Coop Insurance (32), Admiral (151), Nationwide (51), Legal & General (41), John Lewis Finance (41), Lloyds Bank (49), Halifax (70), AA (135).
Who are the home insurance Recommended Providers?
Which? members can log in to find out who we've crowned as our Which? Recommended Providers for car insurance in 2021.
If you're not already a member, join Which? and get full access to these results and all our reviews.
How we calculate the scores
Customer scores
The customer score is based on a survey of 1,686 claimants, and are worked out using a combination of overall satisfaction and customers' likelihood of recommending their insurer.
Providers must receive a minimum sample size of 30 to be included.
Why only talk to customers who've claimed?
You'll only know how good an insurer's customer service really is when you have to make a claim. That's when good insurers will show their ability to deal with problems, quickly process your claim and arrange replacements or repairs as soon as possible.
Policy scores
The policy score is our assessment of the quality of standard cover, comparing 47 elements of a buildings insurance policy and 66 elements of a contents insurance policy.
Total score
Total score is made up of 50% of the customer score, and 25% each of buildings and contents policy scores.
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