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It’s an incredibly convenient way to live – with a supermarket and all the shops you need right around the corner. Unfortunately it also creates quite a busy environment, and increases your home’s susceptibility and you  becoming a victim of crime. However, for those of you that don’t live near a shopping centre, there are some definite benefits! You might have to pay a little more in petrol to get your milk and bread, but a new breed of home insurers is quickly repaying that in reduced home insurance premiums. We look at why and how.

The increased risk of living near shopping centres
If you live near a shopping centre, you also live near high-volume car traffic and often high-volume foot traffic. Being exposed to greater traffic equals a greater risk to your home from crime-related events, and as such home insurance premiums need to be higher to cover the extra cost of claims in the area.

How standard insurance calculates the shopping centre risk
Standard home insurance and contents insurance policies will usually ask you little more about your home’s surroundings than the postcode. In reality, the presence or absence of a wide variety of known risk factors for insurance claims makes a huge difference to how likely you are to claim on your policy. Obviously, the likelihood of making a claim must be directly related to your insurance premium – that is the principle of insurance! Ordinary insurance companies will use your postcode to calculate an average score for the risk. This is  based on the characteristics of all of the homes located in that area. So basically, if you don’t live near a shopping centre, you are paying for other people’ convenience in your home insurance premium!

Saving on home insurance premiums
A home and contents insurance provider that actually asks you questions about where you live is an excellent way to save on your premiums, for those that are in low risk areas. It isn’t only shopping centres that can bump up your risk profile, and therefore your premium. Things like:

* Living near the sea or watercourses
* Living near vacant land, forested areas or bush
* Living near a pokie venue, secondary school, university or railway station
* Not being familiar with your neighbours
* Being surrounded by tall trees – even having one within 20m of the house
* Having gas appliances on the property

All of these contribute to your risk – so if any of these don’t apply to you, you could be saving on your home and contents insurance.

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