The most common home insurance complaints

Home insurance is one of the most complained-about types of cover, with more than one in 10 claimants taking their complaint to the ombudsman last year.  

To find out why, we submitted a freedom of information request to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and obtained data on the thousands of complaints it received about home insurers over a 12-month period.

Read on to find out the top causes of disputes, where the ombudsman most frequently sides with customers, and whether making a complaint is worth the effort.

• Find out more: The home insurers and policies we recommend 

What do home insurance customers complain about?

A customer can only escalate a complaint to the ombudsman if their insurer hasn't resolved an issue after eight weeks or says it's not fixable. The FOS received around 6,400 buildings insurance complaints and 1,600 contents insurance complaints in the year to March 2026.

The table shows what these complaints were about, and the rates at which resolved disputes were upheld in the customer's favour.

Rejected claims are the top cause of complaints

Declined claims most frequently drove customers to the FOS: a third of buildings insurance complaints and four in 10 contents cover complaints were from customers whose claims had been rejected.

The ombudsman upheld around a quarter of these complaints for both buildings and contents cover. This means it found the insurer had done something wrong in how it had treated the customer, but not necessarily that the insurer had made the wrong decision in rejecting a claim.

Insurers often explain low acceptance rates as customers misunderstanding their policies, and previous Which? research has identified widespread misconceptions around what policies cover.

One reason for this is that the home insurance features you're most likely to need often come as optional add-ons or are less straightforward than they might seem.

Among more than 3,000 claimants we surveyed this year, the three most common kinds of claim were accidental damage, home emergency and damage from wind, rain or hail. When we analysed 72 policies, we found that cover for the first two was usually an optional extra, and what was included varied. In many policies, 'storm' was either not clearly defined or excluded heavy rain, hail or snow when not accompanied by high winds.

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Which complaints are upheld the most?

The FOS was most likely to find fault with insurers over complaints about delays and repairs. For buildings cover claims, it upheld more than half of claims where delays or repairs were the issue.

In disputes over repairs, the rate at which it has overruled the insurer has risen in recent years. 

In the policies we reviewed, repairs organised by insurers or carried out by their approved repairers were most often guaranteed for one year. However, many complaints likely involved disputes over how repairs were carried out, which you can't anticipate from policy promises alone.

For buildings cover, the watchdog also frequently ruled in favour of customers in disputes about the size of the payout, upholding just under half of complaints.

In our survey, 44% of claimants had their claims settled in cash, and disputes can arise over whether it's enough. With claims involving significant construction work, cash settlements can potentially be a gamble. 

When you take a cash offer, you essentially free the insurer of further responsibility for that part of the claim. If you accept an £80,000 payout, only for work to spiral into £150,000 of costs, you'll struggle to get a top-up.

Widespread failings

Since 2024, Which? has been campaigning about poor customer treatment in the home and travel insurance markets, having found evidence of widespread failings in how policies are sold and explained, and how claims are handled.

As a result of our campaign, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched several investigations into these markets in late 2025, with results expected towards the end of 2026. 

In late October, the House of Lords Financial Services and Regulation Committee published a report following its own inquiry into home and travel insurance. Among its recommendations, the committee has called on the FCA to accelerate its work to improve consumer understanding of insurance policies, and to intervene to ensure that better-quality data is widely available to help customers make informed decisions between different firms and policies.  

It has also tasked the regulator with setting out a clearer timetable for when and how it will deal with issues in the market.

Rocio Concha, director of policy and advocacy at Which?, said: 'Coming home to a flooded home or collapsed ceiling is traumatic enough, but nobody should have to spend months or years living in a construction site while their insurer drags its feet.

'With its end-of-year report imminent, the FCA has a real opportunity here to show how it’s finally getting a handle on the insurance market. We’re eager to see the progress the regulator has made and work with it in rolling out its plans.'

• Find out more: Read about our End the Insurance Rip-off campaign

Is complaining worth the effort?

Yes. According to FCA figures, 722,924 insurance customers complained to their insurer in the first half of 2026. The insurer upheld more than half the complaints resolved during that period, meaning it admitted it had got something wrong and took steps to put things right. This shows that while a complaint isn't guaranteed to solve your problem, it can be an effective way of getting it addressed. 

If you complain and remain dissatisfied after eight weeks, you can escalate your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service. It's a free-to-use service that will independently review the details of your complaint and decide if it should be upheld. If it rules in the customer's favour, the insurer has to do what the FOS says to put the situation right. 

Overall, the FOS upheld 38% of complaints about buildings insurance and 30% about contents cover during the period we examined.

• Find out more: How to complain about an insurer