AA Insurance: Canstar’s Home & Contents Insurer of the Year 2023

Congratulations to AA Insurance, for taking out Canstar’s inaugural Insurer of the Year | Home & Contents Award.

When was the last time you reviewed your home and contents insurance? While it’s easy to just renew your policies each year, if you set and forget your home and contents cover, you could miss out on better prices and products from a different insurer.

Or, worse, if you fail to adjust your amount of cover, to take into consideration things like inflation or improvements you’ve made to your home, you could be left out of pocket in the event of accident, theft or natural disaster.

Of course, many people are put off researching a better home and contents insurance deal because of the hassle of comparing different providers. But that’s where Canstar can help. Our research does the hard work for you.

The Canstar Home & Contents Star Ratings use a sophisticated and unique ratings methodology that compares prices and features across home and contents insurance products.

We then award the best products our 5-Star ratings for Outstanding Home & Contents Insurance, and the best insurer our prestigious award for Insurer of the Year | Home & Contents. This recognises the insurer that delivers consumers outstanding value through its products, services and levels of customer satisfaction.

Insurer of the Year Award | Home & Contents

This year, our expert panel’s research covered 15 products from 11 providers, across three consumer profiles:

• Home & contents insurance
• Home only cover
• Contents only cover

For the customer service element of the award, policyholders are asked to rate their satisfaction with their insurer across five key areas:

• Communication
• Comprehensiveness of cover
• Cost
• Customer service
• Value for money

And on the results of our research, AA Insurance is the winner of our Insurer of the Year | Home & Contents Award 2023.

AA Insurance: Award-winning cover

In awarding our Insurer of the Year award, our research panel noted AA Insurance’s “strong performance across all consumer profiles” and that it offers “a high level of cover at a competitive premiums”. AA Insurance’s customers also report “strong satisfaction across a range of factors, including value for money, communication and comprehensiveness of cover”.

AA Insurance’s win comes as the wider insurance industry reassesses individual policy holder risk. Instead of averaging out risks across wide areas, insurers are now assessing customers on a street-by-street basis. This change in risk profiling is a result of recent natural disasters and the increasing threat of climate-related events.

Ultimately, this means that households in areas at greater risk of, for example, flooding or landslides, will face higher premiums that those in more secure locations.

How AA Insurance assesses customer risk

AA Insurance takes a range of factors into account when assessing customer risk, depending on the policy. For home and contents policies, it looks at the location of a property, its cost to rebuild and, increasingly, whether it’s exposed to natural hazards, such as earthquake and flooding.

Each customer’s situation is unique, but AA Insurance is committed to ensuring its customers always pay a fair price. It uses sophisticated data models to better understand customer risk, particularly in earthquake-prone, low-lying or coastal areas. And it regularly reviews the different factors that affect customer premiums, to ensure they are an accurate reflection of the risks faced.

How AA Insurance helps its customers mitigate risk

Unfortunately, if you live in a location that is vulnerable to more extreme weather events, you can expect to see your home insurance premiums rise over time. However, AA Insurance is focused on ensuring any increase in premiums is priced responsibly.

AA Insurance also works closely with its customers to help them understand risk and to ensure their assets are adequately insured.

Ultimately, adequate cover is the safest way to cover against accidents, theft and natural disasters. And AA Insurance encourages its customers to regularly review their levels of cover, either annually, at renewal time, or during the policy period.

To reduce the cost of premiums, customers can choose to increase their excesses, use multi-policy discounts or opt to pay their premiums annually.

AA Insurance’s Home & Contents Insurance

AA Insurance’s Home & Contents Insurance cover includes:

• If your home is damaged or destroyed by a natural disaster, AA Insurance will repair, rebuild or pay you up to the total sum insured. If your home is damaged in any other event, you may receive more than the sum insured under its replacement cover
• Up to $20,000 for temporary accommodation your family, including pets
• New-for-old cover on your possessions
• Replacement of locks and keys if the security of your home is at risk following a burglary, theft or loss
• Up to $2000 of hidden water-damage cover
• Legal liability cover up to $2 million
• Range of discounts, including multi-policy discount and AA member discount
• Pay only one excess on claims across multiple policies for a single event
• AA Insurance’s Home Response provides around-the-clock access to trusted tradespeople across the country

For full details of AA Insurance’s award-winning Home & Contents Insurance, click here.

View Home & Contents Insurer of the Year Award

About the author of this page

This report was written by Canstar’s Editor, Bruce Pitchers. Bruce has three decades’ experience as a journalist and has worked for major media companies in the UK and Australasia, including ACP, Bauer Media Group, Fairfax, Pacific Magazines, News Corp and TVNZ. Prior to Canstar, he worked as a freelancer, including for The Australian Financial Review, the NZ Financial Markets Authority, and for real estate companies on both sides of the Tasman.