Wedding bells should ring insurance alarm bells

As we enter the ‘wedding season’, rural insurer NFU Mutual is offering a timely reminder to newlyweds to review their home contents cover following the big day.

Despite many couples receiving a gift list full of presents, less than one in ten married people (8%) thought to check their level of cover following a wedding.

Of all those surveyed who have ever been married, almost half (43%) did not review their home contents insurance after the big day and nearly a third (32%) simply do not recall whether they checked their cover after their nuptials.

The gift list market, estimated to be worth £267.2m in 2006, continues to grow and many brides and grooms are including everything from £500 plasma screen televisions to expensive crystal glasses and Wedgwood dinner services running into thousands of pounds on their wedding lists. However, most do not check their insurance to reflect these changes.

In order to reduce the stress in the lead up to the big day, NFU Mutual automatically increases the amount of home contents cover in the household by 10% or £5,000, whichever is the greater, for the month before and after the nuptials.

David Oram, Personal Insurance Underwriting Manager at NFU Mutual says, “There is a great deal of excitement in the run up to a wedding and naturally, the practicalities of checking your home insurance can sometimes be forgotten. Although NFU Mutual offers newlyweds the luxury of a temporary automatic increase, once the honeymoon period is over, we urge couples to review their levels of cover.

“You can check whether your insurance is of the right value by using the NFU Mutual home insurance contents calculator. By simply typing in the value of the items you have around your house, including your brand new wedding gifts, the calculator will help you check whether you have enough cover in minutes. It might not be the most romantic way to begin married life, but it should give you peace of mind and guarantee you are covered.”