After five new product offerings came to market in 2022, the past year has seen little in terms of new entrants, with the 2022 entrants spending the year finding their feet.

We’ve seen around 42% of policies receive an update however the vast majority of these have been minor in nature, refining certain clauses for practical purposes.

Many would consider the market to have returned to a healthy state with capacity being found for most areas of risk types and offerings generally being competitive.

Methodology

Our Rating methodology has remained the same since inception and considered the following:

1. Who is the insurer?

2. Is the policy an Insured Events policy or a Broadform Accidental Loss/Damage policy?

3. Is the product freely available to purchase?

4. How comprehensive is the wording?

Full detail of our methodology can be found here.

What Ratings Changed?

All ratings have remained the same as last year considering the lack of any new offerings, and the policy revisions not changing the fundamentals of the products.

Inflation Eats at Benefit Limits

Updates to policy wordings tend to include reviews of policy sub-limits such as benefits for emergency accommodation, excess utility charges, fallen trees and the like. Considering the past decade has seen a CPI increase of around 30%, and more for building costs and accommodation, incumbents not reviewing these sub-limits has implications on overall product quality.

Unfortunately for insureds of the lower quality products, the impact of not increasing these sub-limits is generally only found out at claim time.

Conversely, for insureds of higher quality products who conduct reviews of these, some even going to the effort of providing a convenient table, the sub-limit keeps up to date with the real-world costs and the chances of being out of pocket are reduced.

As the lower quality product insurers battle on price it is important for decision makers to consider the intricacies of what they are purchasing and the net value achieved under the insurance contract for unit owners, rather than just the headline premium cost.

So, there you have it – the StrataRatings awards for 2024!

Come and check out which Rating your policy achieved here.