Most people make one or two significant home insurance claims in a lifetime, which means almost nobody is practised at it. The claim arrives at the worst possible moment, there is water coming through a ceiling or a room full of smoke damage, and the process has to be learned from scratch while the house is in pieces.
This guide sets out the order to do things in, what to record while you still can, and the points where claims most commonly come unstuck.
First, make it safe and stop it getting worse
Before anything to do with insurance, deal with the immediate problem. Turn off the water at the stopcock, isolate the electrics if water has reached them, and get people out if the property is not safe to be in.
Your policy expects you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage. That does not mean starting repairs. It means the sensible holding measures: stopping the leak, covering a hole in a roof, boarding a broken window. Keep receipts for anything you have to pay for at this stage, because those costs usually form part of the claim.
What it does not mean is stripping out, throwing away or repairing before the damage has been seen and recorded. That is the single most common early mistake, and it is the one that is impossible to undo.
Record everything before anything moves
Evidence is easiest to gather in the first few hours and impossible to gather later.
Photograph and video everything, widely and then closely. Get the room as a whole, then the specific damage, then the source if you can see it. Date-stamped is better. Do it before anyone starts drying, lifting or clearing.
Write down what happened and when, while it is fresh. Keep damaged items rather than disposing of them, unless they are a health risk, because an insurer or their representative may want to inspect them. Start a folder, physical or digital, and put everything in it: photographs, receipts, correspondence, the names of everyone you speak to and the date you spoke to them.
A claim is largely a documentation exercise. The people who find it goes smoothly are usually the people who started documenting on day one rather than week three.
Tell your insurer, and read the policy before you do
Notify your insurer promptly. Policies carry notification requirements, and late notification is a reason claims get challenged.
Before you make that call, find your policy documents and read the relevant section. You are looking for what is covered, what the excess is, what the exclusions say, and what the policy requires you to do. This is dull and it is worth half an hour, because the conversation with the insurer goes very differently when you know what you are entitled to.
When you report it, give the facts plainly. What happened, when, what the damage is, what you have done to stop it getting worse. Resist the urge to speculate about cause or to estimate values on the spot. An early guess at a figure has a way of becoming the number everyone argues about later.
Understand who is who
This confuses almost everyone, and it matters. The loss adjuster who comes to your property is instructed by, and works for, your insurer. They are not neutral and they are not working for you, even when they are perfectly pleasant about it. A loss assessor works for you, the policyholder, and prepares and negotiates the claim on your behalf.
We have written in detail about the difference between a loss adjuster and a loss assessor, and it is worth reading before the adjuster's visit rather than after it.
Where claims go wrong
In our experience the recurring problems are these.
- Clearing up too early, destroying the evidence the claim depends on
- Under-recording, so that items and damage that were genuinely there cannot be demonstrated later
- Accepting the first position without understanding what the policy actually covers
- Missing the knock-on losses, such as alternative accommodation while the property is uninhabitable, professional cleaning and debris removal, which are often recoverable but only if they are claimed
- Letting it drift, with gaps of weeks between messages, which almost always works against the policyholder
Our guide to why home insurance claims get rejected goes through the refusal reasons in more detail. Most of them are avoidable and several of them are decided in the first week.
When to bring in a loss assessor
A straightforward claim with a modest value and a cooperative insurer does not necessarily need anyone. Plenty of people handle those perfectly well themselves.
The point at which professional help starts to earn its place is when the claim is large, complex or disputed: significant structural damage, a property that cannot be lived in, a business element, a claim that has been challenged, or simply a process that has stalled and will not move.
We are loss assessors acting for policyholders, not for insurers. We prepare and present the claim, deal with the insurer and their loss adjuster, and handle the negotiation. There are no upfront fees. Our claims process sets out how that works from first contact, and the homeowners page covers the domestic side specifically.
What we will not do is tell you what your claim is worth before anyone has looked at it, and you should treat any firm that does with some caution.
In short
Make it safe, stop it getting worse, and do not clear up. Photograph everything before anything moves. Read the policy, then notify promptly and factually. Keep a folder and keep it current. Understand that the adjuster works for the insurer. And get help at the point where the claim stops being straightforward rather than after it has gone wrong.
If you are at that point now, get in touch and we will tell you honestly whether you need us.
This article is general information about how home insurance claims work in the UK. It is not advice on your individual claim, which will turn on your own policy wording and circumstances. For advice on your situation, speak to our team.
