Average quoted prices for home insurance have continued to fall as competition among providers intensified, according to the latest Consumer Intelligence Home Insurance Price Index.
Quoted premiums declined 13.1% in the past 12 months and 4.8% in the past three months, compared with 3.9% in the previous quarter.
Premiums were most frequently quoted between £150 and £199, with 29% of quotes in that range. In September, 67.3% of consumers were able to find quotes under £200, up from 57.5% a year earlier.
Laura Vas, senior insight analyst at Consumer Intelligence, said: “More than two-thirds of the most competitive providers cut quoted premiums for combined building and contents policies in the past three months.
“We also saw firms reducing premiums in the buildings-only market more substantially than in the contents-only sector, changing the previous trend where the contents-only market saw stronger deflation.”
Since Consumer Intelligence began collecting data in February 2014, overall quoted premiums have risen 46.7%.
However, the past year has seen widespread declines across all regions, with Wales recording the largest annual fall at 16.8% and a 6.8% drop in the past three months.
Nine of the 11 regions saw double-digit annual declines, with the smallest quarterly fall in the North East at 2.6%.
Premiums have also fallen across all age groups, with under-50s seeing a 13.7% annual decline compared with 12.6% for over-50s.
Over the past three months, the respective decreases were 5.1% and 4.6%. Property age also influenced pricing trends, with homes built between 1895 and 1910 seeing the largest annual reduction at 16.6%. The same property age group recorded the steepest three-month drop at 6.6%.
Consumer Intelligence’s Home Insurance Price Index is used by the Office for National Statistics, regulators, and insurance providers as the benchmark measure of price movement in the UK home insurance market.
