Home Content Insurance - QBE vs AAMI

Hi all,

At the moment we are in the market for Home & Content Insurance.
After do some research, we finally come up with 2 choices, which is QBE or AAMI.

Hope someone in this forum can give us some input & suggestion between these 2 companies.
Any advice or personal experience are more than welcome!

Below is our current situation and followed by some finding between 2 companies (our own opinion).

Situation
Currently we're building in Williams Landing estate. This is a pretty brand new estate, so at the moment there are lots and lots of construction work on the site. At the moment we have no direct neighbor, only an empty land. Handover will be around 2-3 weeks time, and fencing will be up in 8 weeks time. We were thinking that it would be nice to have the lowest excess as possible for the first year because we never know what might happen.

QBE insurance
-. Need to specified the building amount to be insured
-. Zero excess feature
-. Great customer service (sales), but not sure if it comes into claim department
-. They offer 'Valuables insurance' feature to cover your mobile phone, camera, laptop, sporting equipment or jewellery from accidental loss, theft or damage away from home.
Here is the feature & benefit from their website
(http://www.qbe.com.au/Personal/Home/Features-Benefits/Insurance.html)

AAMI insurance
-. Total building replacement
-. No zero excess, minimum excess is 100
-. Great customer service (sales), again, not sure if it comes into claim department
-. No claim bonus

For comparison, we do some quick quote with $100 excess for both building & content and it comes up with the following figure:
AAMI: $1048
QBE: $1004

Any comments?

Cheers,

All should offer replacement insurance, and you should always have to specify the amount you're insuring for - otherwise, how can they calculate the premium? And remember that "replacement" value is still limited to the amount of insurance you're paying for.

I prefer to pay lower premiums and have a slightly higher excess - in 29 years, I've had exactly three claims. One was for a replacement clothesline after a tree fell on it (under $300), one for a broken window (around $200) and one for a fire (claimed under both buildings and contents insurance on that one - about $5,000). We paid out around $400 in total for excesses. If we'd gone for the higher premium, lower excess option, we'd have shelled out a lot more over that period.

You have to calculate the risk and decide what will work best for you - and in the end it's about as scientific as playing Tattslotto.

If you're concerned about theft, spend a bit extra on the best locks you can afford, a decent monitored alarm system, and make sure you keep everything locked up - including garden tools and equipment.

If you are considering QBE, give this company a call http://www.insurancehouse.com.au/ I am insured with them and it's underwritten by QBE, as an insurance broker they might be able to provide some better pricing - it doesn't hurt to give them a call

Both are reputable insurance companies.

I've been with AAMI for some time.
I've found their customer service to be great and always accessible.

Had only 2 house related claims to date (a number of motor claims - but that's for another thread).

One on contents for a break-in.
No problems with the outcome of that.
They fixed damaged doors and windows and replaced all stolen items to my satisfaction (or provided store vouchers to the replacement value).

Another on building for a damaged/leaking pipe.
They covered to cost to locate the damaged pipe and replace (make good) all brick work once the pipe was fixed.
Again - very happy with the outcome.

Hope that helps.

That exactly what we were thinking. But the sales consultant told us that they will replace the whole building with any cost (we provide 1 quotation and they supply 2 quotations). And in the sales quotation, the repair and rebuilding cost is printed as Unlimited. Mhh...


You're right kek. But at the moment our logic is to go with the lowest excess as possible for the first year, since we have no neighbor and not many resident in the estate at the moment, so that if there is something happen we can claim without paying any dollar. Once we have neighbor and the estate getting more resident, hopefully in the next year or so, we will back in the market for home content insurance. Does this logic seems acceptable??


Yep, we're worried about theft and vandalism since we are both working in the city.
We will installing window lock and dead bolt on every external door. Also, back to base alarm will be installed on the day of settlement. Do you think this is secured enough since we will have no fencing for the first 8 weeks?

Great!! Thanks for the tips lisanne
So how's your experience with this company? Are they have a good service and reliable?

Great to see a thumbs up for AAMI

A number of companies are offering this now to combat under insurance. It makes bad PR to have people paying large amounts of money when they think they are covered.

They generate a probable cost based on the information you supply. This is why they often ask more questions, to get a better idea of what it will cost to replace. You'll generally pay a greater premium but have the peace of mind of knowing that it will totally cover your place.

Make sure all the information they have is correct because they can deny the claim if anything is wrong.

They are fantastic! I've not made a claim but I know others who have and there hasn't been a problem. They offer a unique cycling insurance (not by default though) that gets combined into your contents insurance and I've had quite a few friends make claims on their $5k+ bikes and haven't had a problem and it's been paid out in less than 2 weeks

This will be part of the Valuables insurance add on to the Home Contents policy. It can be quite good value and certainly worth looking into if you have high valuable portable goods like bike or laptops. It should also cover mobile phones.

It's actually a separate policy with it's own name - Cyclesafe, so it's not a standard part of a policy (I believe) and then if you want to be covered while racing then it's a few more dollars depending on if you have a carbon frame or not etc

Its sounds very impressive ...Thanks for sharing great info...im planning to take QBE..How to contact your company ? will you have any branches in Lecistor (UK) ???

I am with AAMI for car and home/contents. Haven't had any home/contents claims yet, but have had a number of car claims over the years and have always been happy with their customer service.

You may be interested to know that AAMI can also provide insurance for specified valuable items out of the home as part of its contents insurance - for example, I have my wedding ring specifically insured so that if I lose it or have it stolen while I am out, it is still covered.

I like the unlimited cover part of the home insurance, because it's not uncommon for owners to underestimate how much it costs to replace a house. When I got home insurance, they asked me questions about the age of the house, its construction, size, etc. The representative told me how much AAMI estimated it would cost to replace the house - let's just say it was a LOT more than I would have estimated if I'd had to come up with a number.

I'm not sure whether QBE Europe will have the same policy as in Australia.

But probably you can find QBE office location from the link below
http://www.qbeeurope.com/locations/index.htm

Good to hear another positive feeback for AAMI


When I asked one of the QBE consultant about the building cover for not being unlimited, he told me that they will increase the amount insured for building part by 6% every year... Not really sure how it works..