Halifax Home Insurance Review: How Good Is It Really?

When you purchase a home, you are entering into what will probably be the biggest financial investment of your life. Despite this, many homeowners are still unwilling to make an additional minor outlay to protect that investment. Home insurance may not be a legal requirement in the UK, but it should be something all homeowners are willing to pay for.

Not least because home insurance does not have to be expensive. Of course, finding the best policy at the most affordable rate is something all customers want. It’s also worth noting most mortgage lenders will demand you have a home insurance policy in place before lending money.

So, which policy do you choose? Well, we naturally think the home insurance policy we offer at Emerald Life is an excellent option.

However, there are certainly many other providers out there. In this article, we will take a closer look at Halifax Home Insurance and examine what they offer.

What Does Home Insurance Cover?

Home insurance may be the most important investment after the purchase of your house. Some people get lost in the excitement of buying a home and forget or ignore purchasing cover. Without home insurance cover, you will be left paying out of your pocket for damage or destruction to your property.

Home insurance is a safety net that means should your house get damaged or destroyed, you will have the funds to pay for repairs or a rebuild. Most home cover policies offer two types of insurance that are typically sold separate or together in a bundle: buildings insurance and contents insurance.

Buildings insurance protects the structure of your home, such as the house, out buildings, and perimeter structure. Contents insurance protects what is in your home… your belongings. There are other additional types of cover that can be sold separately or part of home insurance policies, such as home emergency cover, legal liability cover, and accidental damage cover.

Halifax Home Insurance

Halifax is one of the largest banks in the country and has been selling insurance products for decades. However, that means Halifax is a banking institution first and foremost and not a dedicated insurance provider. That said, the company has been selling insurance for so long this detail hardly matters.

Halifax takes a flexible approach to home insurance cover. There are several options available to customers. Firstly, it is possible to choose either buildings or contents insurance separately, but many customers want to bundle them together.

Bundles come in two policy packages, the standard Halifax Home Insurance bundle and Halifax Home Insurance Ultimate, which is a more comprehensive insurance package.

Let’s start with the normal Home Insurance policy, which combines buildings and contents insurance. Halifax provides the following standard benefits:

Buildings Insurance

• Sum insured buildings cover of £500,000 (there is an option to increase to £1,000,000)
• Covers damage from fire, smoke, floods, storms, lightning, earthquakes, explosions, theft, vandalism, and water leaks from
• water installations and domestic appliances.
• Theft or loss of keys emergency cover.
• Alternative accommodation during an insured.
• event, up to 20% of the buildings insurance sum insured.
• Accidental damage to fixed glass, sanitary, and ceramic hobs.
• Water damage from burst pipes.

Contents Insurance

• Contents sum insurance of £75,000, with optional increase to £100,000.
• Damage from vandalism, theft, and attempted theft for contents.
• Cover for computer equipment, televisions, video and audio, mirrors, fixed glass in furniture, glass shelves, ceramic hobs.
• Contents stored in outbuildings up to £5,000
• Alternative accommodation cover up to 20% of the contents limit or £20,000 (whichever is greater).

Halifax Home Insurance Ultimate

Halifax Home Insurance Ultimate is the comprehensive home insurance cover from Halifax. It includes all the benefits of the standard home and contents cover but adds the following additional benefits:

• Unlimited buildings sum insured
• Alternative accommodation cover limit up to £30,000
• Damage cover for water and oil leaks from fixed domestic installations and appliances.
• Property owner liability up to £2,000,000.
• Legal expenses up to £50,000 (buildings and contents).
• Employer liability up to £10,000,000 and tenant liability up to £10,000.
• Business and furniture cover in the home up to £5,000.

Additional Benefits of Halifax Home Insurance

Halifax provides some perks alongside its home insurance policy. First up is no interest when you pay monthly via Direct Debit. For customers that combine their buildings insurance and contents insurance, Halifax tries to sweeten the deal with £50 cashback or an Amazon tablet: a night at a hotel for two, or a NOW TV and 6-month Sky cinema pass.

Finally, Halifax also offers a 10% discount for all customers of its online banking. Of course, to get this discount you will need to hold a bank account with the company. As always with these kinds of perks, they are just window dressing with the important focus being the policy itself.

Sure, it’s nice to get cashback and discounts, but these should not distract one from focusing on finding the best policy to meet your needs. One should avoid buying any insurance product based solely on the perks and bonuses on offer.

Instead, opt for the solution that best meets your insurance needs at the most affordable price possible.

Making a Claim with Halifax

If an incident happens and you need to make a claim, Halifax provides several forms of contact. For the specifics of a claim, it’s worth checking your policy documents for all the information you need. During the claims process, any excess you need to pay will be detailed in your policy. As always, it is advisable to read your policy contract in full, including small print, when buying insurance.

In terms of the excess, this is the amount of money you will have to pay towards an insured event before your insurer will pay a claim. An excess can be a percentage amount or a monetary amount. For example, if the excess is £100 and you make a claim to repair a £700 TV or outside structure, you will need to pay this £100 towards the repair costs.

If you choose a low excess, you will pay less towards the claim but will probably end up paying more for the policy. In contrast, a higher excess will see you pay more to repair damage, but you will get a more affordable policy.

Halifax as an excess of £50 on buildings and contents cover for its standard Home Insurance policy. Customers buying the Home Insurance Ultimate package will have an excess of £100 on buildings and contents. All the excess amounts above are mandatory, but customers can also agree a higher excess with Halifax and receive a lower cost on their policy.

What the Customers Say (as of June 2021)

Halifax provides a home insurance product that ticks most boxes and is recognized by industry watchdogs for its security, fairness, and quality. The company has a five-star rating from Defaqto while also being fully regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. While it’s nice those are in place, the best way to know about the pros and cons of Halifax home insurance is by asking customers.

When looking at Halifax’s reputation across consumer review platforms, it’s clear there’s a general gap between opinions of the company’s banking services compared to insurance products. In terms of Halifax home insurance, customers deem the company to be a mixed bag in terms of customer care and products.

On reviews.co.uk, Halifax home cover is rated 2.5/5, with the general consensus being there is plenty of confusion around claims. Specifically, insurance reviews argue Halifax does not always clearly state the terms of the policy. Again, that’s why it is important to always read the fine print of the contract you sign with an insurer.

Consumers are a little happier on SmartMoneyPeople.com, where Halifax home insurance gets a 3.83/5 rating. Here some customers say they are seeing increasing costs year-on-year and that Halifax does not inform them a policy renewal is coming, simply automatically renewing the policy instead.

Sure, you can take all customer insurance reviews with a pinch of salt, but the truth is it is worth checking these types of sites to find the general opinion on a company. For Halifax, it seems the company is mostly well regarded but could do better.

At Emerald Life, we prefer to ensure consumer satisfaction by simply putting the customer first. Our whole company is set up to serve customers by providing them an inclusive insurance solution that is available to all. This is reflected in our home insurance policy, where instead of trying to wow you with cashback or other perks, we offer a service based on diversity.

If you feel you have been left outside the insurance loop based only on who you are, we can help. Moreover, any customer can come to Emerald Life and be treated like a person, and not just another number. Our reputation for a customer-first approach means we enjoy a 4.9/5 rating on Feefo.com, 5/5 rating on SmartMoneyPeople, and 3/3 on FairerFinance.

Summary

Halifax home insurance does a lot right. Certainly, it’s a solid policy as standard, providing a good level of protection for your house and its contents. If you spend a little more, you can enjoy a comprehensive package through the Ultimate policy, although you still won’t get home emergency cover unless you pay more.