HalifaxInsurance | Home, Travel & Pet Insurance from Halifax

The Halifax Bank of Scotland adverts have entertained us and made us cringe and their cross-branding can get confusing at times but these days with everyone and their dog (no offence Churchill) able to start up an internet based insurance company many are turning back to the reliability and comprehensive cover that you generally only get when a well known financial institution is at the helm, not just financing the boat. Although it is expected, due to their extensive mortgage facilities and experience, for the Halifax to sell home cover they also insure your car, pet, travel and health.

Unlike most insurers these days, the Halifax's website is geared towards getting you to phone so that they can tailor your policy and as incentive they offer deals like premium fixing which is only available offline. They also have quite a stringent online questionnaire with things like making more than two claims in three years and working from home requiring you to phone them. Confusing to us because surely if you wanted to call them you would have opened the Yellow Pages, not logged online to find their website.

Anyway, discounts that apply with either application include up to 30% no claims discount plus a further discount if you buy both buildings and contents cover together. The latter normally has some of the lowest combination discounts we've seen (e.g. 5% a few months ago) but it's good to see a strong effort with the ever growing trend of no claims bonuses attached to home insurance. As you would expect they pride themselves more on service than the cheapness of their policies with a no-form-filling claims inquiry process, a dedicated Halifax claims manager to process that claim and a 24 hour repair/replace promise once that claim is settled.

Travel insurance from the Halifax is not as extensive as specialised travel insurers but if you're looking to have general cover for your holidays and you want to keep all your policies in one place there is nothing wrong with the cover provided for such. Single trip travel insurance, individual annual cover, world travel cover, winter sports and family travel insurances are all available with a discount for buying any policy online. Halifax pet insurance services are less generous with the discounts with only a few pounds off should you buy online but you do get an extra discount if you insure more than one pet with them. Big plus is the no age limit with some insurers capping at five years for some breeds. The Halifax Bank of Scotland Group (HBOS) has been providing insurance and closely related services such as mortgages for many years which gives them a unique perspective to create comprehensive home cover. They quote themselves as the largest mortgage and savings provider in the UK and one of the leading insurers. †

02/11/2008 Halifax's pet insurance comes with a 5% discount for buying online. Its cat insurance also includes up to £1,000 for the cost of advertising if your cat goes missing, which is a useful feature that I've not seen from other companies. Their online quotation form is not the best, and in particular it's easy to use the wrong format in their date fields. Their form is also a bit longer than other pet insurers', with questions about whether your pet is used for racing or security services: I don't these should apply to cat insurance quotes! However, their quote was the cheapest I've had so far.

05/06/2008 Site was a bit repetitive and asked some of the same questions more than once. Liked the fact there was a free-phone number if you had problems rather than the national rate numbers which some sites have. Could save the quote with a reference number so it was easy to find the quote again. Only two options given for the plan though and one was too high, one too low. Liked the way that it told you who was actually underwriting the insurance on the quote page rather than having to go through the policy wording to find it. Also wanted to insure my chinchillas but they only did cat and dog insurance so couldn't take advantage of the discount which they offer for insuring extra pets.