When to review your policy and what do we do to help you each year…

Most insurance policies are for 12 months, but you shouldn’t wait until then to look over your policy to make changes, there are other times when your circumstances change and it’s best to have a chat with your broker.  Some examples of these are below :

• Change in relationship status
  If you get married or enter a de-facto relationship, you should check how this affects your policy. You would normally take out a combined home and contents policy, and you might find that you get a discount on other insurance, such as for your cars, if you and your partner both choose policies with the same insurer.

• Change of address
  Moving house is a good time to review your insurance policies. You may find that if you move to a different suburb, your risk will change accordingly and this may affect your insurance premium not only for your house but also your car.
• Renovations
  Improvements to your property could affect your risk or your sum insured. Insurers will assess whether changes to a property, such as installing window and door locks and changing to hail-resilient roofing, could change your premium.
• Change in how you use your vehicle
  For instance, if you start using your car for business it may affect your policy. If another person starts using your car more often, you may need to list that driver on your policy.
• Once your End of financial year accounts is finished.
  This is a good time for owners of small or medium enterprises to make sure their insurance policies are still relevant. Though it’s often a hectic time for small business owners, having the business’s paperwork in front of you means you can see how your business has changed during the past 12 months and what your projections for the next 12 months look like.

• Changing business activities
  At any time, but especially during and post-COVID, a lot of businesses needed to change up their approach with new or varied activities.  Making sure your policy covers this new venture is critical

What happens at renewal…

The renewal date for your policy is based on the date agreed upon when the policy was first set up but can be changed.  We recommend what we call, “common due dating”, so you have all your policies due on one date.  That way, we and you have a holistic view of all your policies and nothing is missed..

At Rivers, your process will start at different times, depending on your individual profile.  For complex businesses, we usually start the process 3 months before renewal.  For Houses and Cars, we start about 6 weeks out.  And this is where the fun begins (for us anyway)….

We know it’s painful, but sometimes (particularly for businesses) we need official proposal forms filled in.  This is to make sure we have the right information for Rivers to discuss with insurers and the quicker we get these back the better. 

Once we have all the updated information, and/or reviewed the information from last year, we will negotiate with the relevant insurers and come back to you, by telling you what the market is doing for your particular circumstances.  Like any other market, one year one insurer may be great but the next they are not, we are aware of who is doing what. We do this by having very regular contact with the insurers who provide insurance solutions relevant to you.  At present we have about 150 that have met our criteria to work with us.. For any one policy, we may have potentially up to 20 insurers that we approach for you. Each of them will provide different formats of cover and level of premium, so the trick is to manage what you require to what they are offering and whether it is going to work for you.  The devil is in the detail of the Product Disclosure Document they each provide.

Rivers will then provide you with options to consider, based on the information we have. 

It’s vitally important that you check all the information each year, to make sure its correct.  Please come back to us with anything that looks amiss or any questions that pop up.

After you have checked everything, the next thing left is to pay the invoices by the due date, to ensure continuing cover.

It is important to meet the payment deadline to ensure your cover remains in place. If you do decide that you are not going to continue the policy, please let us know before the renewal date. Depending on the terms and conditions of your policy, you may get charged for the time that the insurer extends as a grace period for payment.

If you have questions about your policy, please contact our team HERE