If you believe the song, then “it’s the most wonderful time of the year” – but the realities of Christmas can soon turn festive dreams into a nightmare unless you’re ensuring your clients are well prepared.
Sometimes statistics speak for themselves – 80,000 people are hospitalized every year from Christmas household disasters and, more pertinently for insurance brokers, as many as 20% of homeowners are believed to not have sufficient cover over the Christmas period. Indeed according to
Aviva, fire damage claims leap by more than 100% as part of the festive season with decorative candles, kitchen fires and faulty Christmas lights among the chief culprits.
The stats prompted
Sellhousefast.uk to carry out its own survey among some of the leading insurance firms in the UK to examine whether or not they cover fires relating to Christmas hazards. The survey showed that most standard home insurance policies will cover fire damage from those typical festive traps: but also highlighted that homeowners can be caught out in cases of extreme negligence.
“Technically, if you caused a fire through lack of your ‘duty of care’ it could lead to a refusal to meet a claim but frankly that is extremely unlikely,” commented Ian Crowder, of the AA. “The main reason why claims might be refused would be deliberately setting your property on fire or a significant and extreme non-disclosure of material facts – for example, not telling the insurer know that you were sub-letting your property or offering bed and breakfast for monetary gain without telling them.”
“Sometimes however people can make decisions which may result in accidents in the home which, whilst unforeseen, could be prevented,” added Caroline Hunter, head of insurance at the
Co-op. “Fires caused by overloading plug sockets may fall into this bracket but, again, we deal with each claim on its own merits. We only refuse claims in exceptional circumstances such as fraud or severe negligence. However, for example, if we discover that faulty lights, or other electrical equipment is at fault we may opt to pursue a recovery from the manufacturer for our outlay for damage caused due to faulty equipment.”
The emphasis, of course, is on the policyholder to take proper measures to reduce the risk of them needing to make a claim in the first place and, as insurance brokers, it’s well worth reminding clients of their festive obligations so they don’t get their fingers burnt should a claim be necessary.
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