Our 2025 Insurance Renewal is now complete

We have now completed negotiations to renew our group insurance policies on 25th March 2025.

As was the case last year, our building insurers, Zurich and Ecclesiastical, have re-assessed the pricing for each individual building on its own merits.

While not every building will experience a reduction in premiums, we are very pleased to have achieved savings for many of our sites. In general, some buildings with the highest premium rates in recent years will see noticeably reduced premiums.

There are some exceptions, particularly where widespread fire safety defects remain, or there is an adverse claims experience. A small number of these buildings will face some level of rate increase, for reasons specific to the site.

We acknowledge that even where savings have been achieved, premiums are generally still higher than they have been historically. Insurers have generally re-assessed their views of the risk presented by multi-occupied buildings, in view of the scale of defects and failures of building regulation discovered in recent years.

Our brokers have again undertaken a market tender exercise this year. Several alternative insurers offered premium indications, but all were more expensive than the terms available from the incumbents. Insurers continue to remain cautious towards multi-occupied buildings.

As part of this process we have also received better offers for some individual sites. In those cases, our existing insurers have agreed to match the terms.

We will therefore renew our programme with the current insurers.

In the medium term we expect, but cannot guarantee, that rates will reduce further, particularly as historic fire safety defects continue to be resolved in the remaining affected buildings. This process should influence pricing positively across the whole market, not just for sites with defects.

We work hard to ensure our insurers commit to reconsidering premiums immediately remediation projects are completed. This has already led to us achieving significant premium reductions across many of our sites where fire defects have been dealt with.

That said, we are still seeing some remediation projects that, while meeting life safety requirements, may not always address fully insurer concerns around fire damage to the building. In such cases premium reductions may be lower.

Inflation has also added to pressure on premiums in recent years. However, this year the rate of inflation increase of sums insured required by insurers has also reduced, to 2.5%, as inflationary and supply chain pressures ease.

For the terrorism policy, we have achieved an overall premium reduction of 17%. This will not apply equally across all buildings, as different geographic risk ratings apply.

Your freeholder receives a share of its broker’s commission in return for the work carried out by its insurance department in support of the programme. That work is carried out through our FCA regulatory status as an Appointed Representative of our brokers. Our commission level is among the lowest in the sector.

We will shortly be sending out invoices and insurance certificates.

If your building is insured by Ecclesiastical, the broker relationship has switched from Lockton Companies to Arthur J Gallagher (UK) Ltd (AJG). Broker correspondence will therefore be issued next year by AJG. The management of any outstanding claims will also move to AJG from renewal. You do not have to take any action as a result.

Our brokers are required by the FCA to provide leaseholders with specified details about freeholder insurance programmes. This information will be distributed by us at renewal. The information includes premium and commission levels, results of tender exercises and other key subject matter of interest to leaseholders.

We are pleased that many leaseholders will receive lower invoices this year. This is a work in progress however and we hope to build on it in subsequent years. We remain acutely aware of the impact on our leaseholders of historically high levels of premium.

Further information on insurance can be found in the FAQs/Insurance section of our website, www.eandjestates.co.uk.