Our Household products – new names, with clearer and better cover

From 1 October 2017, all new policies and renewals will contain better-written and more concise policy wordings that make more sense to your customers.

Our easy-to-read policies include:

House Guard Extra - now called ‘House Guard’
Optima Home and Optima Bedrooms - now collectively called ‘Optima Home/Beds’

What’s changed and what do I need to do?

We’ve changed several sections within our policy cover to reflect what they really mean in everyday language. We wanted to help customers better understand what was covered, so we’ve re-written the usual insurance jargon to make things clearer.

Due to the level of changes we’ve made, you’ll need to send the new policy wordings to your customers upon renewal. You can easily order or download the new wordings on our stationery and supplies page.

Increased cover limits for House Guard policies

Here are a few highlights of the increased cover that your House Guard customers will enjoy:

Contents cover has increased from £75,000 to £80,000 on bedroom rated policies
Valuables are now covered up to 30% of the sum insured
Unoccupied period cover has increased from 30 days to 60 days
A single item – up from £2,000 to £2,500
Contents in the open – £1,000 to £1,500
Garden cover – £1,000 to £1,500
A single pedal cycle – £500 to £1,000
A mobile phone – £300 to £1,000

New Benefits for Optima Home/Beds policies

Your Optima customers will also benefit from the following newly included cover:

Buildings

Accommodation costs for 30 days after being forced to leave home
Damage to recent home improvements covered for 60 days

Contents

Guests’ personal belongings - up to £1,000
Damage caused by Tenant’s home improvements - up to 10% of the contents sum insured
Counselling fees – up to £1,000
Recently purchased contents - up to £1,000
Being forced to leave home – up to £500

New individual excesses

We’ve also introduced some important new buildings and content excesses across House Guard, Optima Home/Beds:

£250 flood excess – keeping our products consistent with the FloodRE scheme
£350 escape of water excess – which now includes damage caused by leaking oil from a domestic heating system