Home Burglary Insurance Assessors Dublin, Galway, Limerick.
Homeowners are mistaken in thinking their home insurance policies cover all financial losses in a burglary and theft claim. Unfortunately this is not the case. Your insurance company will only cover insured losses suffered. These losses are then subject to policy excess deductions and under-insurance deductions (where applicable).
Best Advice for prevention of a home burglary
The best advice therefore, is that prevention is better that cure. It is certainly the most cost effective and least traumatic from the home owner’s perspective. The most recent statistics taken from the Central Statistics Office recorded crime index shows 19,092 burglaries and related offences occurred nationwide in 2017 .
A thorough and systematic way to protect your home or business is to take a 3 step approach.
Step 1 – Firstly, assessing the risk as your insurance company would. Take a look at the historic statistics for your particular area, county and local Garda Station. “Phone Watch” have provided a burglary report & map that provides detailed information for your locale with the recent CSO statistics of incidents. This report includes 8 useful tips to bolster burglary prevention.
Phonewatch – security guide advice – CSO burglary map
Taking this advice and current ‘best practice’ is step 2 on the way to a more secure property and presenting an unpalatable building to criminals. Interestingly as a “Phone Watch” customer, it is said you are more than 4 times less likely to have a break-in.
Burglary insurance claims & home contents insurance premiums
From the perspective of your insurance company, a property with no alarm system is most vulnerable. This presents a higher risk to cover which therefore means higher premiums for the homeowner. A home with a standalone alarm does provide some deterrent to criminals and burglars. It decreases the element of risk for your insurers and having an alarm should lower the cost of your insurance premium.
Some alarms, however, do activate for a myriad of reasons such as power cuts and other faults. This can cause the alarm to be a nuisance to neighbors which can leave the alarm’s ‘call’ slow to investigate or report. This is often exploited by burglars who set off alarms repeatedly on purpose to set up a type of ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation. This leads to the home becoming another statistic & the home owner having to make a burglary & break-in claim. The ideal solution is a monitored alarm system which presents the best deterrent to the criminal. When the alarm is activated, action will follow within moments.
Once you have monitored alarm fitted and follow the top tips for securing your home, your ready for step 3, shopping around for the best price contents insurance cover. Insurance premium costs have increased sharply in recent years, however these extra costs can be reduced or eliminated. By availing of discounts that some of the insurers offer to policy holders, when they reduce burglary and theft risk with the installation and use of a monitored home security system.
Advice on alarm system service providers
As burglary and theft claim specialists, we highly recommend the fitting of a Monitored Alarm System.
Reducing the risk of injury and death from fire, smoke and carbon monoxide
At Claims Assist Loss Assessors Ireland we attend many house fire insurance claims. These incidents involve serious fire and smoke damage but fortunately they are without serious injuries or loss of life. Many of these homeowners have survived the risk of death & serious injury due to the use of a combined monitored burglar, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.
