Home insurance can provide cover for your household buildings, contents or both together.

The modern house insurance policy will almost always cover items on a 'new for old' basis, although there are still some around that will only offer indemnity cover, or 'old for old'. There are certain exceptions to the rule, however, as claims for clothing, linen and pedal cycles, will often have a deduction made for 'wear and tear'

Traditionally, if you needed to claim for a damaged television for example, insurers would ask for a claim form and to see the invoice for a replacement. Nowadays most underwriters will be able to deal with your claim over the telephone and send a replacement for the damaged goods directly to you. This has grown to such an extent that incredibly, Norwich Union have become the largest supplier of domestic appliances in the UK, more than any of the high street retailers!

We offer three main types of home insurance policies, with several underwriters:

Standard home insurance - sum insured rated

Package home insurance - bedroom rated

High net worth home insurance - individually tailored

Standard home insurance will require you to provide a precise valuation for the amount of your buildings and contents to be insured. This often causes problems as it can be very time consuming or expensive to provide an accurate figure.

The buildings sum insured is the worst culprit, as people often misunderstand that this should be the market value of the property. In reality, the market value is often far wide of the mark, as the insurance value should be the cost of re-building the property, were it to be totally destroyed in a claim. Older properties will have features in their construction that would be expensive to replicate today and this is particularly apparent for listed buildings. Market value will have more to do with location than construction, and re-building a property in an expensive part of London will not be too different to that in rural locations. A professionally qualified surveyor will be able to advise you on the correct value to insure your property. Alternatively (and more economically) you can use the guide on the Association of British Insurers' website.

Contents insurance can be more straightforward, although is it very easy to underestimate the true value. If you try to build a figure in your head, immediately you start to value your expensive purchases such as the couch, television, computer etc. Unfortunately this overlooks all the small items which combined together, will prove to be a large proportion of your overall sum insured. Just take a look at your bookcase and add together the books at between £5 and £20 each. Then look at your Music Centre. You remembered to include the Hi-fi, but did you include the several dozen CDs which cost over £10 each? Use our contents insurance calculator to help build up a true picture of your sum insured.

Package home insurance policies offer a reasonable sum insured for contents, usually in the region of £35,000. This is sufficient for many households, although care still needs to be taken. There is usually an inner limit for 'high risk' items being a maximum of 1/3rd of the total sum insured. High risk items are those considered theft attractive, such as jewellery, antiques and electronic objects.

High net worth policies are for customers who need higher than average sums insured, normally being in excess of £250,000 for buildings and £75,000 for contents. Customers who qualify for this product will often have collections of expensive jewellery or antiques. In this case It is particularly important that items of significant value are properly catalogued and valued to avoid any uncertainty following a loss.