Visit Barclays >>Name: Barclays Insurance No. of Reviews: 8
A natural progression for a mortgage provider is to move into home insurance services and Barclays have gone a step further offering home, car, travel, life, student and health insurances. The brand is tried and tested so what do Barclays offer over and above the regular insurers? New for old replacements and accidental damage cover are what you would expect but extras like temporary accomodation for your family and even pets if you home is victim to fire or flood are the things you would not expect to find at your bargain basement .com insurers. Thought has been given to what is covered with not only TV's being covered but satellite boxes and aerials too, something you would normally have to argue with your satellite provider about. A surprising addition is cover for accidental damage to other people's homes such as your child's football accidentally going through a neighbours window and just lends to the idea of complete coverage. Barclays Home Insurance have taken a leaf out of the supermarket's books and gone with the branding of Barclay's "finer insurance" to separate themselves from other insurers that label themselves as no-frills or cheaper insuring companies. Certainly the quality cover continues with things like world-wide personal possession protection and dedicated claims managers for each claim.
All this will come at a slightly higher price but Barclays have gone out of their way to ensure that you are not paying for anything you don't need and try to tailor their policies as much as possible. One huge difference between Barclays and other house insuring firms is that they will actually make a concession based on the value of your house. This has resulted in a quoted seven out of ten people getting a home insurance quote from Barclays that was £170 cheaper than they had previously been quoted elsewhere. Another Barclay bonus is the discount for buying online, not normally that big a discount but they are the only ones we have seen that give you that online discount every year you renew also, normally such only applies to new customers in their first year.
They do, however, generally offer a loyalty discount if you buy another insurance product from them. Again, not particularly staggering with some discounts as low as 5% - which is pennies on things like pet or travel insurance. Other offerings include car insurance and strangely they do not offer anything less than fully comprehensive cover - they offer to send you to a broker for third party, fire and theft but that is it. As promises go Barclays motor insurance is full of them with 24-hour helplines, accident recovery and repair service (with repairs guaranteed for 12 months) with a free valet thrown in if you use their authorised repairers. The no claims discount available is a mystery and shifts from time to time, but the only real issue we have is the wording of "an efficient claims service" - efficient for whom? We've heard plenty of stories about Direct Line where "efficient" means "takes months" to get a pay out. We'll let the comments board fill up on opinions of their actual service though.
Travel insurance from Barclays, like their house insurance, is an expected move just like American Express have done in the past. Three levels of cover with the usual cover levels at the top such as £10 million medical and £2 million liability. Again, we don't like some of the wording such as "payout within two days of agreeing a claim" - on first glance it suggests to us, and probably others, that this means claims are sorted out in two days. But the time taking to "agree" on a claim is not mentioned, just that it will take 48 hours more after that to pay you. Another gripe would be the incentive they state that 35 sports and leisure activities are automatically covered. Hiking, hill walking, rambling, fell walking and trekking are listed as five separate activities and the only reason they stopped is because they probably couldn't think of another word to describe "walking off-road" - they seem to have done the same with water sports/activities too. The majority generally come with exclusions as well so this is one where reading the booklet is paramount before buying. The list covers no adventure sports (unless you trampoline quite dangerously?). †
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08/02/2009 Had a Life insurance policy with them including critical life cover. My wife got cancer and they refused to pay due to her seeing her GP for a pulled muscle and neck pain, that the specialists say isnt related, taking them to court but dont the the hassle