Dual House Insurance?

A question about : Dual House Insurance?

Hi,

My father sadly passed away late 2013 & is survived by his spouse. He was very 'tidy' & extant paperwork only reaches back to 2012. Paperwork from this year mentions Home Insurer 'HS' but paperwork from early 2013 begins mentioning a second home insurer 'GH'.

GH insurer is due for renewal so they wrote to us and I basically asked them why are we insured twice? They didn't know & had never heard of Insurer 'HS'. GH said I needed to identify if our home was dual insured & if so, to let them know.

There is nothing in the old correspondence mentioning 'dual insurance cover'. Can anyone possibly suggest what is going on here please?

Is it all right to have dual insurance cover? Why would someone want dual insurance cover - is it a good idea?

Many thanks,

ric

Best answers:

• Generally its not a good idea as it causes significant headache whenever claims happen due to the differing wording/ coverages etc. When you get into commercial insurance then it may not be uncommon to have multiple policies either that are co-insurers (ie covers overlap) or are different layers (ie one policy for up to Ј3,000,000 of losses and then another for Ј3m-Ј5m) with the reason being a combination of both insurers desire to carry such large risks all on their own and the fact it can be cheaper to break up the policy and do other smart things.
  I cant think why a regular domestic situation would benefit from dual insurance. Most the time it happens is due to autorenewal being forgotten about after buying new insurance elsewhere.
  What are the names of the companies? The codes arent helpful if one company claims not to know who/ what the other one is.
• Thank you. Yes, this is decidedly domestic insurance cover & not commercial. The names of the two insurers are a). Gallagher Heath, and b). HomeServe. Please advise further.
• HomeServe don't write home insurance. I would think their cover relates to boiler breakdown / Home Emergency cover.
• Thanks, that's a relief - so we can keep them both current, the one for Home Insurance, the other for boiler / Home Emergency