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WHAT IS TENANT INSURANCE

As a tenant your landlord is responsible for making sure the building you live in is correctly insured. Contrary to popular belief your landlord is NOT responsible for replacing your possessions.

Whether you have rented a furnished or unfurnished property you will be asked to pay a deposit, this secures the home and protects the landlord from damage that occurs to the property. Normal wear & tear should not affect your deposit but damage attributed to your irresponsibility, or that of any visitors, can be charged to you. Tenant insurance will provide cover for your possessions & many policies include accidental damage as standard helping to protect your deposit.

Insurance in a modern sense i.e. methods of transferring or distributing risk, was practiced by Chinese and Babylonian traders as long ago as the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, respectively. The need for risk management to protect ones possessions form potentially devastating loss, was clear to even these civilizations, despite their not being a contract or ‘policy’.

Tenant insurance known today is the legacy of Nicholas Barbon. After the great fire of London, which devoured 13,200 houses in 1666, Nicholas Barbon opened an office to insure buildings, to prevent such grave loss and devastation in future. In 1680, he established England’s first fire insurance company, “The Fire Office”, to insure brick & frame homes. The massive loss incurred in London in the aftermath of this tragedy showed the importance of insuring our possessions.

INSURANCE FACTS

- 25% of homes do not have content insurance, leaving residents open to financial loss for their possessions in the event of fire, flood, burglary, storms or natural disasters*.

- The average home in the UK has a contents value of between 40-50 thousand pounds, yet many have contents insurance which provides an insufficient level of cover.

- In the UK there is a burglary every 20 seconds*.

- There are over 45,000 accidental house fires in the uk every year. (*Office of National Statistics 2006).