Buying insurance means buying peace of mind. If anything unexpected happens to rock your finances or your family, you at least know that there’s a certain amount of protection in place to help you pick up the pieces again afterwards.
It’s the bill you pay for a service you hope you never have to use. When you do need to turn to it, you need to know you can trust the insurer to pay out quickly and without trying to find a way out. Yet insurers are well within their rights to declare a policy invalid if you have failed to keep up your end of the deal.
You might be surprised at just how many commonplace things you can do that mean you breach that contract and risk invalidating your cover. Here are some ways you can invalidate your cover.
Failing to activate your alarm.
Your insurance may reduce in cost if you have a burglar alarm or particularly good locks but that’s for a reason – it makes you less of a risk. It’s really important to understand exactly when your insurer expects you to activate any security systems so that you don’t risk finding your cover is invalidated because you didn’t. Read the insurance documents. They may be dull but being bored is better than being broke.
Underestimating your value.
Around 11 million UK households are not confident that they have valued their possessions correctly for home insurance or they have no insurance at all. It is also found that 44% of contents-insurance customers had not reviewed the high-value items they had in their home for the last five years, potentially leaving them dangerously underinsured.