The latest confidence figures show that UK consumers are feeling more concerned over they spend their earnings. That suggests that any measures that can be taken to lower outgoings would be welcomed by households up and down the country.
One way in which households can achieve long-term financial savings is to make changes to their home security that will reduce home insurance premiums. These changes are relevant to home-owners and tenants as both groups pay insurance either for the entire building and contents or contents alone.
“Households can save money on regular costs such as insurance, by taking a little time to review their policy and making a few small or one significant change to improve the security of their home” said Brixton and Battersea estate agent Eden Harper.
One change that could reduce insurance payments by up to 15%, according to research from Axa Business Insurance, is to have a reliable house alarm or warning system. Indeed, with technology in that area improving all the time, it’s possible to invest in a single system that not only warns of unwanted intruders, but can also detect changes that could alert you to flooding or fire.
In recent months a number of new, high-tech systems have become more widely available. These systems can give home-owners and tenants peace of mind over a number of things. Not only can they alert you if you’re out and your burglar alarm goes off, but thanks to newly developed artificial learning systems, there are sensors which gain a sense of the typical temperature and movements within your home and alert you when there are unexpected changes to those norms.
“If there is a product or system that can tackle multiple problems in one, then it’s no surprise that everyone from tenants to big businesses would want to use it,” said Paramount Properties, an estate agency based in West Hampstead.
Cocoon is one such system that can monitor your entire home, be it a noisy city flat or a family home in a quite village. The ability to monitor your home for all kinds of potential problems combined with a smartphone app that can alert you to any change or problem is one that insurers, home-owners and tenants can all benefit from.
The number of burglaries has fallen in recent years, with the latest official data showing there were 701,000 incidents of domestic burglary in the year to March 2016, 11,000 fewer than the same period in 2015. So it might be understandable why householders aren’t keen to spend too much on home security against burglary. However, a system that can keep your home secure while also monitoring and warning over other potential problems becomes more useful and beneficial with regards to insurance risks and premiums.
“Smart devices for the house – for example, thermostats, leak detectors and security alarms – have the ability to help customers understand and manage risks to their home much more easily and quickly than ever before,” said Helen Jales, Head of Innovation at Zurich UK in a press release.
Figures from Axa highlight how incidents such as water leaks can prove costly. But, with some good housekeeping such as keeping homes adequately heated, particularly when Britons go on holiday, could bring down insurance claims by up to a collective £387 million. Installing a new smart home system could help households achieve their share of those savings.
“There might be a significant initial cost with a smart home system, however, it would likely be worth if for most homes,” said estate agent in Knightsbridge Plaza Estates. “Even if only one of those incidents was detected a single time by your system, the associated costs to the repair of a major leak caused by frozen pipes or a burglary would make the installation cost worth it.”
