The excess, and the sum worth doing before you notify
The Financial Ombudsman Service puts it simply: most policies explain that the customer must pay an excess towards the claim cost. Allianz publishes a standard minimum excess of £150 on its home cover, adjustable up to £500 in exchange for a lower premium. Those are that insurer's published figures for its own products, quoted as an illustration of how the market sets them.
Two things people miss.
There can be more than one
Many wordings carry a general excess plus specific, higher excesses for named perils. Escape of water is one of the most common to carry its own, because it is a frequent and expensive claim type. Subsidence almost always does. Check the schedule for a peril-specific figure before you assume the general one applies.
Voluntary excess is a bet you already placed
The part you chose at renewal to shave the premium is payable exactly the same way as the compulsory part. A large voluntary excess is a reasonable choice on a policy you expect to use for catastrophes only. It is an expensive one if you were hoping it would take the sting out of a single damaged ceiling.
When not to claim at all
Run the arithmetic before you notify, not after.
- Estimate the work honestly: detection, access, the pipe repair, drying, and reinstatement.
- Subtract the excess, including any peril-specific excess.
- Remember the repair to the pipe itself is commonly excluded, as is anything above the trace and access limit.
- Weigh what is left against having a claim on your record at every future renewal.
On a small, contained leak the answer is often that a claim is not worth making. On a leak that has been running under a screed floor and has damaged the flat below, it plainly is. What we can do either way is find the source and quote the repair on a clear basis, at £150 per hour agreed before we attend, with no charge for the search time if we do not find it. See pricing.
Betterment, and what it actually means
Buildings and contents policies are, in the ombudsman's words, "generally policies of indemnity, which means they aim to put the policyholder back in the position they were in just before the loss or damage happened". Not in a better one. Betterment is the label for the gap.
It shows up on water leak claims in recognisable shapes:
| The situation | The betterment argument |
|---|
| A twenty-year-old kitchen floor is soaked and has to come up | The insurer says a new floor is worth more than the old one was |
| Failing lead or steel pipework has to be cut out to reach the leak | The insurer says replacing the run in copper or MDPE is an upgrade |
| A ceiling is replaced and the whole room needs repainting to match | The insurer offers the damaged wall only |
| Old, chipped tiles cannot be sourced to match the repaired area | The insurer declines to retile the whole floor |
Where the argument has limits
Betterment is not a general licence to underpay. The ombudsman's guidance to insurers recognises that sometimes refusing work because it would improve the customer's position is not fair, and that where the work is necessary for an effective and lasting repair, it expects the insurer to do it anyway. A repair that will fail again is not an indemnity.
On matching, where an item forms part of a set and an exact match is no longer available, the ombudsman's usual approach is an award of 50% of the cost of replacing the undamaged parts of the set, though it says circumstances vary. That is a useful number to know when a handler tells you a tile is a tile.
And on cash settlements, the ombudsman says the amount "should reflect the cost to the customer of getting a repair done" and be "enough to put them back in the position they were in before the loss or damage". If the offer will not buy the work, the answer is a written quote, not a phone call.
How to argue it without arguing
- Get a written, itemised quote for the reinstatement as specified. Vague totals invite vague offers.
- Separate necessary from discretionary. If the old pipe run cannot be reconnected safely to the new section, say why in technical terms, with the report to back it.
- Ask what the insurer says the pre-loss condition was, and on what evidence. Betterment is a claim about the state of something before the damage, and that claim needs support like any other.
- Put the matching problem in writing with evidence that the original material is discontinued.
- Keep the sequence. Photographs before, report during, quote after.
This is where the detection report earns its place a second time. Our report records the material, age and condition of the pipework as found, with photographs, which is exactly the evidence a betterment discussion turns on. It is written to be accepted for a trace and access claim, and it doubles as the pre-loss record nobody else thought to make. Our damage repair and reinstatement quotes are itemised the same way.
If you cannot agree
Complain to the insurer in writing and ask for a final response setting out its position. FCA rule ICOBS 8.1.1R requires insurers to handle claims promptly and fairly and to settle promptly once terms are agreed. If eight weeks pass with no final response, or you disagree with the one you get, the Financial Ombudsman Service will look at it. It is free, you do not need a solicitor or a claims management company, and you have six months from the date on the final response. You must have raised the complaint with the insurer within six years of the problem, or three years from when you could reasonably have known about it.
What we will not do
We will not tell you what your policy covers, because we have not read it and we are not authorised to advise on it. What we can do is find the leak, document it properly, repair it, and put the building back, and give your insurer a paper trail that is hard to argue with. Book an engineer, or read the rest of the insurance claims pages first.
