GB Home Insurance FAQs during Covid19

We are aware that during these unprecedented times some Home Insurance policyholders may be worried about the impact changes in daily conditions will have on their insurance cover. As a team we are keen to confirm a few points which may be of relevance to your clients and policyholders who are insured with a Prestige home policy.

What if a client is now working from home temporarily?

Providing this is clerical use then they do not need to tell us as we would not take any action anyway. People do need to be mindful though that we will only be covering them for equipment for which they are responsible for insuring.

A customer is away and unable to return home meaning their property will be empty for longer than they told us/ longer than the standard Unoccupancy permissible under the wording?

The same logic as the first point will apply here for the customer.

A customer’s employment status has changed but they have not been able to inform us?

Sadly, we may see some of this if somebody loses their job. We will absolutely not hold this against anybody in the event of a claim if they haven’t made us aware of a change in Employment status.

A customer is unable to comply with a deadline to have an inspection carried out or something fitted?

We fully appreciate that it will not be possible for people to have non-essential work carried out for the time being, for example having an alarm installed or having a chimney swept. We will not alter terms or restrict cover for anybody falling into this bracket and as such will automatically allow extensions factoring this in along with any backlog when things start to return to normal.

What happens if a customer cannot comply with the inspection condition on an Unoccupied Property?

The Government are not banning people from leaving their houses full stop albeit we do appreciate that it may be more difficult for some people than others to comply. We are also mindful that certain demographics may be more heavily impacted than others in terms of their ability to move around. In short, we will not penalise somebody if they haven’t carried out an inspection owing to restrictions put in place by the Government. It would be wise though for people who are likely to struggle going forward to turn the water off if they are able as this will seriously reduce any EOW risk

The list above is not exhaustive, and we are aware other scenarios may arise. Please do get in touch and raise any further queries with us we will happily assist you.

We will of course be following the FCA guidance in terms of factoring in people’s understandable temporary changes in the way that they use their home in response to Government advice and the emerging Coronavirus situation.