What do insurance companies consider severe?

[Simon Moody]

Can anyone relate/help?

On Friday 5th January after days of intermittent heavy rain and strong winds our roof finally agreed to allow copious amounts of water to run through the ceiling and into the kitchen. It had found a way in where the back of the house meets the conservatory and also down the chimney breast.

AXA insurance have an online toll you have to use to see if your home insurance covers the problem.  On completing the form I am informed that the 'severe weather conditions' recorded do not meet the criteria for cover.

Our town is all over the news. Flooding is the worst in living memory. Roads were closed because fallen trees. a week before the torrential rain hit.  The data the insurance company use to determine wind speed and rainfall at your property within a given timescale is impossible for me to verify.   Where do I go to disprove their assertion that wind speeds peaked at 53mph - 2mph higher and I would have been covered! Or that rainfall was xmm and not ymm yet emergency services have been overwhlemed?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

[Bristawl Si]

Hi.

I'm ex-Financial Services but i was always on the Investment/Pensions 'arm' of the industry.

However, having been a house owner for nigh on 36 years and knowing a fair bit from ex-colleagues on the insurance side there will be a number of issues an insurance risk assessor will look at.

Firstly, when you bought the policy did you declare that you had a conservatory attached to the house?

If you did, fine,

but if not

i'd expect your policy to be invalid, if claiming against water damage coming in at the point of conservatory attachment to the main house.

Secondly, an assessor will look to see if your house was in good condition before the rains arrived i.e. was the affected roof area already in a state of disrepair prior to the rain storm. Believe me, they will know, by looking at it post-leak.

If they've deemed it wasnt a storm, by their definition, then i'm surprised that you cant lodge a claim, so an assessor can visit your property.

[Simon Moody]

Thanks you for the response - it's appreciated.  I can see that the policy recognises that the home is  a brick built bungalow with a coservatory but getting an assessor to validate or reject the claim is the issue.  They don't accept that their recorded wind speed or rainfall constitutes a severe enough event, therefore reject the claim rather than investigate.  Meanwhile, weather reports suggests rain returning at the weekend - I have to get some kind of repair before then and will have to use first available company regardless of whether they are AXA approved - obviously, everyone I contact about repairs is crazy business with gale damage locally.

[Bristawl Si]

29 minutes ago, Simon Moody said:

Thanks you for the response - it's appreciated.  I can see that the policy recognises that the home is  a brick built bungalow with a coservatory but getting an assessor to validate or reject the claim is the issue.  They don't accept that their recorded wind speed or rainfall constitutes a severe enough event, therefore reject the claim rather than investigate.  Meanwhile, weather reports suggests rain returning at the weekend - I have to get some kind of repair before then and will have to use first available company regardless of whether they are AXA approved - obviously, everyone I contact about repairs is crazy business with gale damage locally.

Hmm....my conclusion then, fwiw, is that any damage, rain leakage from outside, is deemed by AXA to be due to insufficient and/or faulty roof pre-storm. I.e the storm didnt cause the damage, but more so the state of the roof/conservatory pre-storm was the real cause.