Insurance

I am thinking about doing the rounds with the insurance companies for a better package. We have everything with Tower at the moment. Anyone know what the best/cheapest companies are?

Car, Boat, House and Contents. At the mo we pay $130 a month - I have no idea if that is good or bad....

Was just looking at States website - like the idea of fly buys!

It depends - sometimes the cheapest isn't necessarily the best. A lot of people recommend AMI, but I know that a few people have had difficulty with them lately as they have severely tightened their requirements for what they will and won't insure. State doesn't have that great a track record with claims (I've had a very bad experience with them over a claim) but they are cheap.

All of our insurances are with the company that I work for, which in my opinion has superior policies but is also one of the most expensive companies, so quite likely not to be considered!!

So it comes down to what you're after really!!

I work for an adviser business affiliated with one of the insurance companies so I'm curious as to who you both work for.....

Even though most of my insurance is with State it isn't them.

ETA: I would have thought $130 is pretty reasonable. Kate is right, ease of dealing with the company and ease of claiming is as important if not more than price.

Edited by summerlamb

I couldn't beleive how easy it was to get payouts with State. Both times it was done within a couple days.

We are with State and our insurance was up for renewal last month and I did the ring around to get what deal I could get. We have ended up staying with State (even if the prices have gone up quite a bit), as we have had no issues with them paying out when we have had claims (car and not our fault either time), we have a history with them and get quite a bit of a family discount. We read in the Herald on Sunday or Sunday Star Times that all insurance companies are putting their prices up and State was the first.

We are with state for contents and 2 cars and pay about $85 a month, with Westpac (don't know who they are underwritten by) for house insurance as we have the govt package so its cheap as chips ($30 a month). We've also had dealing with NAC for DH's old car - wouldn't recommend them as they're definitely just for the boy racer type crowd and very expensive!

So far with State we've claimed my car twice (both not my fault), and contents 2 times - one for a burglary which was 7k worth of stuff, the other was our carpet which came out at about 3k. We've never had any issues with them other than being put on hold, but you get that anywhere. Never had any issues with payouts being disputed or anything. I was actually surprised after all the horror stories you hear how incredibly pleasant and easy it was, and the staff were always happy to help (I rang constantly just to check we weren't going to get lost in the system as you sometimes hear about). I haven't had any experiences with anywhere else though sorry.

One thing to check is your policy wording for your car insurance, whether you are covered for the agreed value (which gets devalued every year) or market value. Luckily we had agreed value when my car was hit a couple of years ago (5k) as the market value had gone down to 3k and there were 3k worth of damages. I wouldn't have got another car as good for only 3k so luckily because I had 5k worth of insurance they repaired it all (and gave it a nice sparkly paint job ). It also pays to check who underwrites the policy, as that can affect your policy as well.