Flood Insurance

Flood insurance is a specific product under the umbrella of insurance and it covers - as the name suggests - losses that occur due to flooding. In many cases, this form of protection (flood insurance) is part of the buildings and contents insurance, and if a property is flooded then the building insurance covers the cost, typically, of repairing and restoring the property and affected fixtures and fittings, and some other associated costs.

There are various risk factors involved with assessing flood insurance, notably of course whether the property lies on the flood plain of a river or other major body of water, how low lying the land is, how susceptible to flooding the area is and how many times it has flooded in recent history, and more besides.

When buying a house in the UK usually a flood check will be done on the property when you buy it and you will be told whether the risk of the property flooding is high or low and so forth. Of course if the risk of flooding is perceived to be very high, then you can struggle to get insurance at all.

Typically those who live in flood risk areas will be required to do as much as they can to flood-proof their homes when taking out insurance, or else they could face extremely high premiums and excesses, or may be refused cover.

It is estimated, according to government figures, that there are 5.2million properties that are at risk of flooding in England, with 1.4 million being at risk from rivers or the sea, 2.8m from surface water and 1m at risk from both.

If you are looking for information on obtaining flood insurance in a high risk area, then you might find this document on the www.gov.uk website a useful read.

Related Articles...

Vehicle Insurance Vehicle insurance is the category of insurance products that cover, surprisingly enough, vehicles. These can be any sort of vehicle that you can think of, with of course the most common product... Income Insurance Income insurance is sometimes referred to as income protection insurance. As the name suggests, this product is focused around what you earn from work. This type of policy is something that will... GAP Insurance If you have bought a car in recent times, then you will probably have come across GAP insurance as the vendor will have asked you if you want GAP insurance or not. If you are not familiar with... Property Insurance Property insurance is a product that applies specifically to property, and has various different types of specific that are subsets of the general umbrella term 'property insurance'. Specific... Health Insurance One of the most common insurance products is health insurance, a broad umbrella category that covers any sort of insurance product that helps an individual mitigate against the expenses that are... What Is Insurance? What exactly is insurance? It sounds like a very basic concept, but it is important to know what insurance is, in order to work out why insurance is so essential to modern-day activities, and why... Payment Protection Insurance Until a few years ago, not many people would have heard of Payment Protection Insurance, commonly referred to as PPI. Now it is almost inescapable, with TV adverts and text messages bombarding... Travel Insurance One of the most common forms of insurance product is travel insurance. Wherever there is travel involved, there is invariably risk, and infact a range of risks, and therefore an insurance product... Motorbike Insurance Motorbike insurance might sound like a bit of a niche category of insurance, but there are actually a huge number of people who ride these sorts of vehicles, and so even within this there are... Reinsurance The concept of 'reinsurance' is quite an interesting one. It comes down to the same sort of logic as 'who will guard the guards?' - in this case who will insure the insurers. The answer is, other...