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Why use landlord insurance brokers?

Using an insurance broker to find your buy to let insurance cover may be one way of ensuring that you find the most cost-effective and appropriate protection for your property.

Specialist landlord insurance brokers may be able to match your requirements to a range of policies, which you can then compare – choosing the one that most closely matches your particular needs and requirements.

Looking for a suitable solution to your insurance needs

Unless you have unusually intimate knowledge about the workings of the insurance market – and landlord insurance in particular – you might want to consult a specialist landlord insurance broker.

Going it alone by shopping around and attempting to compare one policy with another is likely to prove time-consuming. It may still not lead to the perfect match between your insurance needs and the policies available.

Do I have to use a broker?

No, you don’t need to use such a broker. You could trawl through many websites trying to obtain individual quotations, or visit your high street, then narrow them down to the policies that most meet your needs.

It’s not just about comparing prices though – you need to ensure that your comparisons are on a like-for-like basis. Individual policies can have different product features, benefits, terms and conditions, so you do need to take care when comparing your landlord insurance options.

A landlord insurance broker can help in that search and make the necessary comparisons on your behalf.

Using landlords’ insurance brokers may be something that saves you time, money and leads to greater satisfaction with your eventual landlord insurance solution. By using an online landlord insurance broker, the legwork is done for you.

What are the advantages of using a landlord insurance broker?

The Money Advice Service says that there are more than 2,000 registered insurance brokers in the UK.

What services are offered to support such a relatively large population of brokers? The British Insurance Brokers Association (BIBA) lists the reasons why many people – including those looking for landlord insurance – seek the help of a broker:

  • brokers have access to insurance products from across the entire market;
  • in addition to providing advice, a broker can also give advice and, if it comes to it, help you in submitting an insurance claim;
  • a broker may help you to manage the risks you face as a landlord and the insurance policies that protect you against those perils;
  • brokers are obliged to be completely transparent about the costs associated with arranging your insurance;
  • they are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and your fair treatment is further guaranteed through the Financial Ombudsman Service.

In a nutshell, a landlord insurance broker possesses the specialist expertise and experience to help ensure that you identify and arrange a suitable insurance policy at a competitive rate.

Landlord insurance to protect your buy to let business

Just like many another responsible and prudent landlord, you may consider landlord insurance to be essential.

Investment in buy to let property is essentially a business concern. As such, your objective may typically be expressed along the lines of trying to obtain the maximum occupancy you can, for the highest possible rates while, at the same time, reducing your costs and risks. Using a landlord insurance broker may help you with the latter part of that objective.

Brokers typically know the market well and have access to multiple insurers. They generally are specialists who may be able to match your requirements against those of their insurers, to avoid you having to do the work of comparing dozens of offers against each other.

Your mortgage and buy to let insurance

You may need your landlord insurance policy in place to protect the structure of your building (if you have a buy to let mortgage, such cover may be obligatory as part of your contract with your lender) as well as its contents. You may also place great importance on having appropriate third-party liability cover.

Important as all those things may be to you, you may also have two further objectives relating to your landlord’s insurance:

  • to try and obtain the most appropriate landlord’s cover you can; and
  • to try and keep down the costs of your let property insurance to the most cost-effective level possible.

These two objectives may, in some respects, appear to conflict with each other, and you may welcome some assistance in trying to achieve both these goals.

This balancing isn’t unique to insurance, of course, because it forms part of modern life. When thinking about landlords’ cover, however, landlord insurance brokers such as ourselves may be able to help you achieve it.

Unoccupied property insurance

It might be worth taking a closer look at how the specialist knowledge of a landlord insurance broker may prove especially useful.

For example, a broker might be able to advise on your possible need for an unoccupied property insurance quote.

An unoccupied property quote may be required in situations where you have a property standing unoccupied for a period exceeding 30-45 consecutive days (an event that may automatically invalidate any existing, standard landlord insurance).

This is because a standard buy to let insurance policy may not provide you with cover if your property has no tenants in it for a period of 30-45 consecutive days (the period may vary depending on the insurance provider).

An empty or unoccupied property may or may not be furnished – it is the absence of tenants that is the critical factor. It might arise for a variety of reasons that may not be particularly important from an insurance point of view – the important fact is that the property is unoccupied and unoccupied property insurance may be required.

That may be because when there are no tenants in your property, small problems may develop into larger ones with no one there to spot them (and get them fixed) and thieves and vandals may be more likely to strike when they may know that there is no one around.

An insurance broker’s proactive advice and high-level view of the marketplace may prove to be invaluable to you.

Additional specialist knowledge

Unoccupied property cover may not be the only feature of landlord insurance that you want to ask your broker about

Your landlord insurance policy, for example, may also be able to offer you cover for malicious damage by tenants as standard or damage caused by subsidence.

You may also welcome the flexibility of being able to choose exactly who you let your property to – some buy to let properties may exclude students or DSS tenants from cover and this may impact on your ability to earn a living.

At the end of the day, what you are looking for in your landlord insurance broker is the chance to select a policy for your investment property which offers you the peace of mind and the flexibility you may need.

Why not contact us today to see how we can help? Or, alternatively, you get an online landlord insurance quote here.

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