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One in five Brits don’t read home and car insurance T&Cs

Joanna Faith
Written By:
Joanna Faith
Posted:
Updated:
19/10/2021

A fifth of UK adults may not have the home or car cover they need because they never check the details of their insurance policy.

A survey by GoCompare found 19 per cent of people never read the terms and conditions on their home or car insurance documents.

Some 21 per cent said they sometimes checked the details of their car insurance and 19 per cent occasionally read the small print of their home cover.

One in four (24 per cent) said T&Cs were too long (24 per cent), while 17 per cent admitted they don’t care about details, just about price.

A further 16 per cent claimed they know all they need to know before they buy, and 15 per cent said they don’t have time to worry about the detail.

Some 13 per cent said they don’t understand the T&Cs and six per cent said the writing is too small.

Ryan Fulthorpe, home and car insurance expert at GoCompare, said: “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.”

Around half of those buying both types of insurance said they always check the T&Cs.

Fulthorpe added: “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.”