FRIENDLY HOME LOANS INSURANCE GUIDE

In spite of rising inflation levels, individual protection products have seen steady sales, according to Swiss Re’s 2011 market review. Sales of Critical Illness cover and Income Protection remain stagnant as the insurance sector struggles to close the ‘protection gap’

The Term & Health Watch report has revealed that term assurance has grown in sales by 2.2% in 2010, with Critical Illness jumping by 0.8%. Income Protection dived by 5.6% – slightly less than the 7.5% drop of two years ago. New whole life insurance sales were still shown to be on the up, following a healthy growth of16.8%. The report shows that the IFA is still a crucial factor within the protection market, still holding a 56.1% share in the term assurance trade – including an increase of 7.3% in a year when other channels experienced a slump in sales.  The company also holds a 60.9% share in the IP market, which has seen sales grow by 4.5% over the last twelve months – at a time when other areas continued to struggle. However, they too saw a significant decline in sale of Critical Illness cover – which experienced a 42.2% drop, overall business for this product has fallen from 10.1% to just 5.8% in the last two years. Falling incomes and rising costs of living could be a contributing factor to the sliding CI sales, with more and more people being unable to afford the cover.

The study also showed that more people are taking advantage of competitive pricing within the market, leading to a fluctuation in term assurance sales as existing cover is re-brokered, average new premiums dropped by 2.2% and 4.3% for Income Protection. Concerns have also been voiced over the small number of providers who dominate the market, as consolidation in the market threatens to isolate other lenders. The top five companies covered almost seventy percent of new sales last year, jumping for fifty-five percent the year before that, CI cover was in a similar state, with the same companies taking credit for around sixty-five percent of sales. However, the amount covered by the top five for IP products had actually dropped from 59.2% to 53.2% from 2009.

When questioned, companied admitted that a ‘depressed’ mortgage market and plummeting incomes could stand in the way of any significant growth in the protection market. Head of life planning as Sun Life Direct, Simon Cox, spoke of the inevitable rise of whole life services, saying it comes from ‘simple, straightforward products which meet customer needs.’

You are leaning positively towards getting landlord insurance. However, you are still unsure of what will be covered in the policy. While not all policies come with the same coverage, most would include saving you lots of hassle and negative thoughts from dealing with errant and irresponsible tenants. Basically, landlord insurance protects you from anything that stops you from getting income from your property. The onus is then on the tenant to ensure that he doesn’t do anything to intentionally damage or destroy your property. Let us have a look at some of the more common clauses in landlord insurance.

For starters, landlord insurance would come with coverage and protection against malicious and intentional actions by the tenant to damage your property or to withhold rent from you. If your property was damaged in any way, you can claim back under landlord insurance to cover the costs incurred in repairing the damages. This could also include legal fees taken against the tenant in your attempt to get back what is rightfully yours. You would also be able to claim back a certain sum for those periods when your property is uninhabitable due to damages incurred during your tenant’s stay on your property.

One of the more interesting aspects of home contents insurance which you can choose to include or exclude from your property is this: if someone were to die from your negligence on your policy, you would not be liable under this charge. Of course, this includes also anyone suffering from minor or major injury sustained on your property, up to death as well. Additionally, if your tenant were to steal anything from your property, you would be covered under landlord insurance as well. Basically, as mentioned earlier, this insurance aims to protect you against any loss of income coming from your tenant’s inability or refusal to act in a manner befitting his position as a tenant on your property.

Before making a decision though, it is certainly best if you can look through all the policies which are available on the market. Some are more extensive than others, and you can choose and select the different types of additional coverage that you would want to include in your policy.