Buildings and contents insurance

[thegrowlygus]

A rather dull and probably stupid question from me...

We are moving house in a weeks time (hooray!) but are in the process of sorting out our buildings and contents insurance. Our current insurers cover us for this house and our new one from exchange. We need to provide a letter to our solicitor about our cover for the new house which presumably our current insurer can provide.

BUT - on phoning our current insurer they are charging us a fortune for our insurance and doing the whole confused dot com business lots of people can insure us for half the price (with the same, if not more cover)

So if we change insurers, do the new insurers provide the solicitors letter?

How does it work?! I assume they do as if we were moving somewhere from rented or our parents or whatever then brand new insurance would provide the info for the solicitor wouldn't they?!

I think you'd need to phone them and ask. The alternative is to just change insurers once you've moved in to avoid the hassle.

Yes: once you know what insurers you want to use, you can set up the policy with a start date from completion (not usually exchange) , and usually a copy of the policy is enough to send to your mortgage co. (afaik it's your mortgage co that wants to know that the house they mostly own is insured. I have always provided the policy copy rather than a letter. Just explain t the new insurance co.

Because it's nnext week, the insurance co may need to fax it. But they will be used to providing policies fo when people are moving house.

You will need to start your new policy from the day of completion and provide your solicitor with a copy of the policy schedule (which you may get a copy of by email if applying online - if not, call them the day after applying and ask them to email it to you and you can forward it on - also handy to save on the computer for easy access in the future). The solicitor will supply your mortgage lender with confirmation of cover as part of the conveyancing process.

With regards to confused.com etc - try the AA too. Ours is with L&G through the AA and all the other comparison sites (and L&G themselves) quoted a higher premium for the same cover. I work in financial services and even did quotes for myself using our panel of insurers and none of them were cheaper than the AA. I pay £22 per month and that includes all the optional extras - home emergency, legal expenses and personal possessions cover.

HTH