1 in 5 UK adults don’t read the policy documents relating to their home and car insurance
- A similar amount admit to only ‘sometimes’ checking their home or car policy details
- Of those who don’t check their documents, 17% say they don’t care about the details, just about the price
- A further 24% say the documents are too long
Around one in five UK adults* (19%) admit they don’t read the terms and conditions on their home or car insurance documents, according to research from GoCompare.
Of the 2000 people who were interviewed as part of the survey, 21% admit to only “sometimes” checking the terms of their car insurance and 19% when they’re buying home insurance.
When asked why they don’t read the documentation, the biggest reason for rarely or never checking the Ts and Cs is down to policy documents being too long (24%), with 17% admitting they don’t care about details, just about the price.
A further 16% claim they know all they need to know before they buy, and 15% say they don’t have time to worry about the detail. 13% said they don’t understand the terms and conditions and 6% say the writing is too small.
Ryan Fulthorpe, GoCompare Home and Car Insurance expert, said of the findings: “Car and home insurance are two of the most common kinds of policy available on the market today. Home insurance in particular has never been more important given that a lot of us are now working remotely, and others have spent the pandemic making significant improvements to their houses and gardens.”
“It’s worrying to think that a significant amount of the population hardly ever - or at best occasionally - check the terms and conditions of these policies. It’s a false economy to take out an insurance policy and not check the detail as you could face being out of pocket if the insurance that’s in place to protect you isn’t valid ,” Ryan added.
Around half of those buying both types of insurance (51% for car and 48% for home) said they always check the terms and conditions otherwise.
Ryan continued, “As an industry, we should be concerned about this and looking at a way we can improve these findings. Whether that’s making policy information clearer or shorter is to be decided, but there is clearly a way to go when it comes to making sure consumers are not only putting the right kind of insurance policies they need to protect themselves in place, but also keeping insurers up to date too. It’s so easy to think that the price quoted is all that counts when buying a policy, but disregarding the terms and conditions of your home, car or any other type of insurance has the potential to cost you dearly when it comes to claim time.”
For more information about GoCompare insurance services, visit: https://www.gocompare.com/
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For further information please contact:
Lynsey Walden or Kath Chadwick at Gocompare on lynsey.walden@gocompare.com or kathryn.chadwick@gocompare.com.
Keep up-to-date with GoCompare on Twitter; @GoCompare
* Between August 6th and August 9th 2021, an online survey of 2,034 randomly selected Great British adults was executed by Maru/Blue. For comparison purposes, a probability sample of this size has an estimated margin of error (which measures sampling variability) of +/- 2.1%. The results have been weighted by age, gender, region and social grade to match the population, according to Census data. This is to ensure the sample is representative of the entire adult population of Great Britain. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.
About GoCompare
GoCompare is a comparison website that enables people to compare the costs and features of a wide variety of insurance policies, financial products and energy tariffs.
It does not charge people to use its services and does not accept advertising or sponsored listings, so all product comparisons are unbiased. GoCompare makes its money through fees paid by the providers of products that appear on its various comparison services when a customer buys through the site.
When it launched in 2006, it was the first comparison site to focus on displaying policy details rather than just listing prices, with the aim of helping people to make better-informed decisions when buying their insurance. It is this approach to comparing products that secured the company an invitation to join the British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA) in 2008, and it is still the only comparison site to be a member of this organisation.
GoCompare has remained dedicated to helping people choose the most appropriate products rather than just the cheapest and works with Defaqto, the independent financial researcher, to integrate additional policy information into a number of its insurance comparison services. This allows people to compare up to an extra 30 features of cover.
GoCompare is part of Future Plc and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
More information can be found here www.gocompare.com or here https://www.futureplc.com/brands/.