At GSI Insurance we understand that although home insurance is essential, most people want cover that is appropriate but also highly cost-effective.

We offer here some top tips in terms of how to find cover that meets such criteria. As always though, we must caution against the idea of selecting your household insurance based exclusively on the price.

Remember that if you ever have to claim against your home insurance, the one thing you won’t want to know at that time is how much it originally cost you! You will instead be exclusively focused on the cover it provides, so it is highly advisable to approach the selection of your policy on the same basis.

Some points that you may well wish to consider might include:

• use your insurance provider! The options that may be applicable to one property are not always the same as those that might be useful for another. We would always be happy to discuss your unique position and offer advice on steps you might be able to take to reduce your costs on home insurance;
• make sure that both your property and contents insurance levels are set appropriately. If they are too high, your premiums may be unnecessarily high too. Of course, if you have under-insured, steps should be taken to deal with that as well;
• see if there are options for you to accept a higher voluntary excess. That is the amount you will pay towards the cost of any successful future claims and typically the higher it is, the lower your premium will be;
• protect your no claims discount (NCD). Making a relatively small claim against your policy may put that at risk and the NCD can be worth a substantial amount of money to you;
• install insurance-approved locks, bolts and alarms on your property;
• install smoke detectors and other fire prevention equipment. That is obviously an excellent idea from a safety viewpoint but it might also result in some discounts on your insurance as well;
• consider storing rarely used but very high-value items in somewhere like a bank. Keeping extremely high-value jewellery items in your home might push your premium up considerably;
• think about whether you have need of new-for-old cover as opposed to market valuation. The latter is typically more cost-effective;
• make sure that you have insurance that is fit for purpose in terms of the way you use your home. For example, if your property is unoccupied then you should have unoccupied property insurance. If your property is unoccupied and empty pending the completion of major building work, you may benefit from unoccupied property insurance or perhaps renovation insurance;
• look for policies that offer as much included in the base price as possible. Subsidence cover might be one such example. Policies that offer a relatively low level of cover for the basic price may charge extra for other elements you regard as essential. That may prove to be an expensive way to secure your insurance cover.

The bottom line is that with appropriate advice, you may find it is perfectly possible to save substantial sums on your property insurance.