Your home insurance isn't designed to cover the cost of maintaining your home – it's for one-off events like a storm, fire, flood or theft.

Home insurance doesn’t cover wear and tear. Your house, and the things you buy to make it a home, will all get bumps, dents or scuffs and wear out from use over time. For example, if your washing machine starts to make a funny rattle when it’s on the spin cycle, you won’t be able to claim for a new one.

Wear and tear also applies to the actual fabric of your house. For example, your roof can start leaking for a number of reasons. The leak might appear unexpectedly - or something might happen and you notice the water coming in. You might assume your insurance covers a leaky roof - but often it’s due to wear and tear, which would mean you’d need to pay for any repairs yourself.

You can prevent wear and tear from becoming a bigger problem by carrying out checks and maintaining your home regularly.

You may have heard people saying insurers use this term as a way of rejecting claims, but it’s actually not true.

An act of God refers to an event that was outside your control, like a natural disaster.

Did you know? The term ‘act of God’ isn’t used in insurance policies in the UK anymore.

In fact, UK insurers don’t exclude losses or damage caused by natural disasters… so your cover will include things like fire, floods and earthquakes.

Your Allianz Home Insurance provides cover for money in your home – check your policy documents to see the limit that applies.

If you want to cover any cash you have on you when you’re away from home, you’ll need to add our personal belongings cover.

Top tip: We don’t cover cash that belongs to your business.

You'll need to let us know the type of work carried out from your home so we can let you know if any additional terms apply.

Clerical work from the home would be classed as 'Office use without visitors' and you should still tell us about it. This could include secretarial tasks, for example, and duties like typing, emailing, answering phone calls and taking messages.

An example of ‘other business use’ would be if you run a beauty therapy business from your home or you have a room for tutoring.

You should also let us know if you work from an outbuilding, such as a detached garage.

Laptops and mobile phones used in the home are automatically covered by our contents insurance.

If you’d like your laptop to be covered away from the home, you’ll need to add ‘personal belongings’ to your policy (this is already included up to £2,000 with our policy). If the laptop’s worth more than £2,000 it will need to be listed separately.

Allianz Home Insurance covers blocked drains or pipes up to the building’s ‘sum insured’ on the policy.

'Trace and access' covers the cost of removing and replacing any part of the building to find the source of a water or oil leak from any fixed tank, appliance or pipe causing damage.

It doesn’t cover the cost of repairing the tank, appliance or pipe itself.

Our policies don’t all offer trace and access cover and there are differing policy limits – please see your insurance documents for more information.

Yes,   if you get a burst pipe at home, we do everything we can to put things right.

To make a claim, please call our claims team.

Calls will be recorded.

You can add them to the personal belongings section of your contents insurance, which covers accidental loss or damage to your personal items (like jewellery, handbags, mobile phones, laptops and tablets). Your items will be covered anywhere worldwide.

The minimum level of cover we provide under personal belongings is £1,000 with no single item worth more than £2,000. Any item worth more than this will need to be specified on your policy.

Good to know: personal belongings are already included up to £2,000 with our policy.

Yes, you may be covered for damage caused by a water leak.

Allianz Home Insurance covers damage caused to your home by water leaking from any fixed tank, appliance or pipe. We'll also pay up to £5,000 (with Allianz Bronze and Silver) or £10,000 (with Allianz Gold)  for the cost of removing and replacing any part of the structure of your home to find the source of a water leak so repairs can be carried out.

Your belongings are covered too. We’ll cover damage caused to your personal items, such as sofas and carpets, by a leak from a fixed tank, appliance or pipe.

You’ll find full details of what's covered in your policy documents.

Yes, with Allianz Home Insurance, we'll pay 50% of the cost to replace any undamaged item if it’s part of a matching set.

For example, if your sofa’s water damaged and unrepairable, we’ll replace it and give you 50% of the cost towards a matching armchair.

We insure battery assisted bicycles, for example bicycles that have a battery and motor attached to help you cycle up hills. We won’t insure any bicycle without pedals.

You can add ‘personal belongings’ to our contents insurance, which covers accidental loss or damage to your personal items (like bicycles, jewellery, handbags, mobile phones, laptops and tablets). Your items will be covered anywhere worldwide.

The minimum level of cover we provide under personal belongings is £1,000 with no single item worth more than £2,000. Any item worth more than this will need to be specified on your policy.

Good to know: personal belongings are already included up to £2,000 with an Allianz Gold policy.

We can cover an annexe as long as your main home is also insured with us. It would need to have the same postal address as your home and be occupied by a member of your family. We just need to update the total number of bedrooms and bathrooms at the property to include the annexe.

If it has a separate postal address, is completely detached from the main home or is lived in by someone that’s not a member of your family, we won't be able to cover it.

If you have full accidental damage cover, you can claim on your home insurance to repair or replace a damaged sofa. This is for things like spilling a cup of coffee on a cream suite. Our Gold  policy includes this as standard.

Good to know: our home insurance covers your sofa for damage caused by things like fire and flood automatically.

We cover musical instruments in the home on all of our contents policies. If you need cover away from the home, please make sure you’ve included personal belongings cover on your policy. 

Just so you know: this covers personal use only; if you play professionally, we won’t be able to cover your instruments.

We don't insure properties that have paying guests. If you’re an existing customer, please email us and we’ll get back to you to see what we can do.

 

We provide cover for your bicycles in the home and you'll automatically get cover up to £350 for bicycles away from the home.

Just so you know: you’ll need to specify any bicycles worth over £350 on your policy.

If you want more cover for your bicycle away from home, you can take out 'bicycles cover' to get insurance for your bicycle across the UK and worldwide.

We’ll cover your contents while they’re in storage with no additional cost under the following conditions:

You need to email to let us know so we can update your policy. 

We’ll only provide cover if a professional storage company is used.

We can provide goods in storage cover for a maximum of 12 months.

We’ll include accidental damage cover to contents in storage if you’ve added full accidental damage on your contents policy (this option can be added at any time).

As the owner or resident of your home, public liability insurance covers you when you’re being held responsible to a person or property. For example, our buildings insurance covers you as the homeowner for claims such as a tile falling off your roof and injuring a visitor.

Our contents insurance covers you and your family as the occupiers of the property and would cover things like a visitor tripping up over a loose rug. Under contents insurance we also cover your personal liability for claims such as accidentally poking someone in the eye with your umbrella.

You’ll find the full terms and exclusions in your document of insurance.