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Allianz explains: the difference between home insurance and contents insurance

Allianz Your Cover (www.yourcoverinsurance.co.uk) provides you with an overview of the main distinctions between these two types of complementary cover for the home.

Uncovering the mysteries of insurance jargon is one of the first steps in successfully taking care of your possessions and protecting against accidents. Making sure you purchase the correct policies to suit your needs is a priority; purchasing improper cover can leave you vulnerable and footing an unexpected bill if emergencies or accidents should happen.

Semantics must come into play in the realm of home insurance. Insuring is relatively straightforward in the case of car insurance for example; it will cover both the vehicles readiness for the road as well as the interior contents and any theft of those. However, home insurance is not quite so simple.

This is in part due to the nature of property ownership and development in the UK. Insurance for the home is divided into two categories: ‘house’/’home’ or ‘building’ insurance; and ‘contents’ insurance. This is very important, because depending on who lives in the house, there may be different policy holders for each type of cover.

Home insurance

Home or ‘house’ insurance is the responsibility of the owner of the home – whether this person is a landlord or the resident in the house as well. In general, buildings or house insurance provides cover for all the structural features of the house which cannot be removed. This means that house insurance can provide cover against fire, collapsed roofing and damage caused by adverse weather conditions such as storms, lightning and earthquakes.

Be careful to choose a policy which provides adequate compensation should a disaster happen. Some insurance companies will provide for the market cost of the house once damaged – this is going to be very low if something happens! Look out instead for companies who will provide sufficient compensation to restore the house.

External and internal systems such as piping, gutters, electricity and water or sewage systems also need to be added into extra cover options. It is rare that they are included in a regular house insurance package.

Contents home insurance

Contents home insurance is a different proposition. This is the tenants’ responsibility if they are renting from a landlord, and usually denotes anything within the house which is removable, including carpets, furniture as well possessions such as hi-fi’s, desktop computers and some valuables, up to a certain degree.

Extremely valuable items or collectibles often need to be insured separately and may not be covered on a standard contents insurance package.

The main threat to these items is robbery or accidental damage by fires and floods, so it’s important to have this too, especially for covering expensive utility items like broken washing machines or dishwashers. Often, homeowners can purchase both policies in a single package, which usually makes them cheaper than buying the two separately. Tenants need only concern themselves with contents insurance, and landlords the home insurance.