Assault and home insurance: the facts

The truth about finding home insurance for assault and other convictions

Many homeowners across the country will find house insurance either unobtainable or too expensive if someone within their household has a criminal conviction such as a previous assault charge. Whether it’s the policyholder, spouse, child or simply someone else living at the property this is all it can take to put off most insurers.

Sometimes it’s questioned why the underwriting of home insurance is affected by criminal convictions. How does it directly affect protecting your own bricks and mortar – your most important asset? This is generally due to two main points. Insurers have a concept called ‘moral hazard’ where they believe past record is an indicator of the future. But again you can argue how this links directly to insuring your buildings and contents.

The other issue is that it may pose an increase risk of vandalism to the property. This is all conjecture, and it really depends upon the insurer how and why they price insurance more expensive. The truth of the matter though is that home insurance with a previous assault charge can be extremely difficult to find insurance for.

Declaring convictions to your insurer

Convictions have to be mentioned to your insurer until they become ‘spent’. The time it takes all depends on the type of conviction. For instance, even ‘minor convictions’ such as fare dodging and possession of drugs need to be mentioned for several years and may lead to insurance being rejected.

However regardless of this, it’s not worth the risk of deliberately not disclosing convictions, since insurers have all sorts of databases they suscribe to in order to find this information out. If they discover an undisclosed criminal conviction, they may cancel the policy and refund no money, or charge an enormous amount more to keep it running.

Finding home insurance with criminal convictions

Here at convictedhomeinsurance.co.uk we believe there needs to be an open minded and fair approach to home insurance. Homes are people’s most important asset, and like people who live on or near a flood plain, the idea of not being able to insure your home is very frightening.

We offer a confidential, professional service and will shop around to find you insurance options at a reasonable cost. If you’re looking for convicted car insurance try our sister site for other excellent rates.