Insurance companies are using global warming to justify a huge hike in home cover premiums — even if the homeowners don’t live near rivers or the sea and have never made a claim for storm damage. The Mail‘s This is Money supplement has more.
In some cases, households have seen the prices of building and contents policies as much as triple, with “changes to weather patterns” given as the reason for the rocketing costs.
Online boutique owner Helena Adams, 66, lives in a £575,000 three-bedroom house in Harrow, north-west London — with the River Thames eight miles away.
She could not believe her eyes when she opened a letter from insurer Esure in July and read the words, “following changes to weather patterns we have reviewed the risk associated with your property”, as an explanation for hiking her home insurance from £291 to £687.
Helena was understandably baffled. She says: “About 15 years ago, a living room radiator valve leaked on the carpet and we made a claim. That is the closest to flooding or storm damage we have got.”
Incensed, Helena cancelled her Esure policy and took out a like-for-like deal with MBNA Bank for £218 a year — £73 less than she’d paid with Esure the previous year.
Freelance journalist Rosie Murray-West was also told in the summer that as a result of changes to weather patterns, her premiums with Esure would be rising from £374 a year to £1,186.
Like Helena, Rosie does not live in the storm-battered Channel Islands, near flood plains or on the edge of a cliff.
Rather, her four-bedroom property is at the top of a hill in South London and five miles from the River Thames.
She says: “I was sent a standard letter with no explanation for the unjustifiable price hike other than blaming the weather.
“What nonsense to use global warming as an excuse to hike premiums. I am now paying £400 a year with competitor More Than —about the same cost as before.”
Worth reading in full.
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Yes and it’s happening in car insurance too, no doubt to make it too expensive to have a car and, in this case, an insured home. Not sure what the details are behind mortgages these days but I believe you have to have house insurance. Therefore, it follows that we are being slowly fleeced. Is this part of a dastardly plan to force us out of our homes? Who knows but all I do know is that there is no political will to counter our gradual impoverishment, to try and bring down costs because it’s all ‘Ukraine, energy, Middle East, war, shortages, covid, climate change etc’.
This year, I was quoted double the amount I was charged last year for car insurance by the same insurer. A little looking around and I managed to get cheaper car insurance again but it’s these shocks and the time it takes to find a new insurer that take their toll, imperceptible though they be.
Climate change having no really discernible shape, form or substance – a ghost if you like – makes the perfect tool for ramping up the prices because it’s so difficult to pin down in any meaningful way. We know it’s a crock of shit but countering the alarmists takes a lot of effort.
I can understand when it comes to EVs bursting into flames, but the home insurance will just quote the IPCC despite their ‘adjustments’ highlighted here. That ex Top Gear presenter is always in TTV or GBN pushing EVs….I wonder of he’s had some windfalls lately for pushing this stuff. Like myself though when it comes to petrol cars, he’s a big fan of the extremely reliable, refined and well built LEXUS LS400.
The whack-up-the-premium-and-hope-the-plebs-don’t-notice schtick has been around for a long time, although perhaps not to current levels of fleecing. I change my car and house insurance companies (plus phone & broadband) about every 3 years: that seems to be the average time they give you before a big hike.
It makes a mockery of the ‘no claims bonus’ nonsense too.
I wonder if the successful pandemic propaganda has shown that only 20% of the population are still willing to fight their corner and the insurers know the other 80% will happily sign on the dotted line and therefore put in the higher prices.
Climate Change is a gift to all manner of socialists and capitalists alike. —–The socialists get to reorganise the global economy based on the phony junk science and the capitalists do what they always do. Try to make money.—— But you cannot blame people for making money out of a situation that had nothing to do with them in the first place. No capitalist tried to exploit science and hijack the environment for political purposes. They simply worked with what is put in front of them. If governments want to send men to the moon the capitalists will invent stuff for getting to the moon. If governments want to impoverish people with Net Zero, capitalists will invent heat pumps and smart meters.