Home insurance offers and deals

When new customers sign up for a new policy, they may receive a discount for purchasing online. This is typically a percentage discount applied to the first year’s premium of the policy.

However, from the second year of your policy and beyond, you’ll be paying full price for your home insurance premium and may not have the cheapest deal that’s available in the market.

Certain insurers may offer rewards points when you take out a policy with them for the first time. The types of rewards available will depend on your insurer and other factors. These rewards might include the ability to book hotels and flights or get gift cards, cashbacks and more!

That said, while you may collect rewards points, this discount typically won’t affect the cost of your premium. It’s important to weigh up whether the points are more valuable than what you could save by choosing an insurer with a cheaper policy.

If you are over a certain age or hold a Seniors Card, you may be eligible for a senior’s discount offered by select insurers. This discount is usually offered as a percentage amount that is deducted from your policy.

While not all insurers may offer this deal, unlike many discounts, this deal may be available for current and new customers and offered on a yearly basis. However, it won’t typically include optional covers and a minimum premium may apply to the policy.

Multi-policy discounts, or loyalty discounts, may be available if you have multiple policies with one insurer. This may include multiple home insurance policies, or if you have other policies with your insurer, such as health insurance, car insurance or a combined policy that includes home and contents insurance cover.

Even if you are an eligible policy holder, it’s still important to compare as while your policy may be cheaper with one insurer, it could be even cheaper to get different policies with different insurers.

Occasionally, you may find other discounts and deals that don’t fall under the above offers. For example, you may be offered a discount if you have a certain number of smart sensors in your home, or you might get discounts on your grocery shopping or free online gift cards.

These types of home insurance offers may be less common and vary between insurers, but they could still help you save on your home insurance cover.

Depending on your insurer and your claims history in the past five years or so, you could be eligible for a no claims discount (also known as a no claims bonus).

This discount is percentage based and may increase with the number of years you haven’t needed to claim, up to a maximum amount offered by your insurer. For home insurance, insurers may cap this at around 30%, which can still be a significant discount off your yearly premium.

When taking out a home insurance policy, you may be able to choose from different levels of cover. The more comprehensive your cover is, the higher your premium will typically be. As home and contents insurance policies are usually combined if you own your home, you could save money by purchasing building-only cover. However, this means your contents will be uninsured if you need to claim.

Most policies also offer optional add-ons for your policy, which come at an extra cost but will also increase your cover. For example, you could purchase motor burnout cover as an optional extra to cover your electrical appliances from burnout, or add portable contents insurance to a contents policy if you want to cover your laptop or mobile phone when travelling away from home.

Home insurance may also be separated by how you wish to be insured. The two options are:

• Sum-insured cover. This is where you estimate how much it would cost to replace or rebuild your home. If you need to make an insurance claim, you will be paid out accordingly. If your estimate is incorrect, you may have to pay out of pocket for the remaining expenses.
• Complete replacement cover. This cover is typically more expensive and can cover all of the replacement costs to rebuild your home (minus the excess), regardless of how much it costs.

One of the easiest ways to reduce your overall premium is by choosing to increase your excess (the amount you contribute towards a claim). You pay your excess each time you claim so while it can be tempting to set it to the highest amount for a cheaper premium, make sure you can afford to pay.

Your excess options can vary between insurers, so consider reading the relevant Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and Target Market Determination (TMD) of any policies you’re considering to get an idea of what excess options are available to you.