90% of home insurers increase content cover over Christmas

A recent report has shown that 90% of home insurance providers automatically increase the level of home contents insurance around the festive period so as to ensure policyholders have adequate cover for Christmas gifts stored at their property. An independent research company carried out the study which found that 9 out of 10 home insurers temporarily increase the level of cover during the Christmas period. The cover is either increased by a specific amount between £1,000 and £25,000, or by a percentage increase of between 5% or 25%. The aim of the automatic increase is to help protect against people being underinsured on their home contents policy. If expensive gifts such as TVs, game consoles, or laptops for example are being kept on the premises, this will push up the value of contents considerably. Insurance companies are starting to react to special events such as Christmas and other religious celebrations and events by altering insurance cover around these times. However insurance experts are advising policy holders to check their policy to ensure they receive the increase in contents cover during this time, as not all companies offer this automatically. Also the increase is temporary, and only lasts for a specific period both before and after Christmas, but again, this differs between insurance providers.