© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
Brevent Insurance, the UK’s leading independent specialists in apartment block insurance, has shaped a number of unique policies with leading insurers to meet the needs of the flat and mixed-use property sector. Ian Reid, Brevent’s MD, warns leaseholders to check what they are paying for.
We regularly receive requests from leaseholders to help them resolve matters when they find out that they are paying for two buildings insurance policies on their flat. This is known as dual insurance and occurs when the whole block is insured under a block policy arranged by the freeholder or the Resident Management Company/ Resident Association (which is the normal practice in England and Wales) and the individual leaseholder who has arranged a buildings insurance policy for their own flat.
Upon investigation it appears there are a number of contributing factors behind the dual buildings insurance saga including mortgage companies cross selling building insurance policies without consideration for the actual property they are financing, and lessees who mistakenly take out insurance through direct insurer websites.
Unnecessary policy
When we’ve asked clients about how they ended up in this situation, we have come to the conclusion that it is often their conveyancer or solicitor that has let them down during the purchase.
How, you ask? By not completing thorough pre-sale enquiries to establish the buildings insurance arrangements for the block and by failing to review their client’s mortgage offer and what may appear to the laymen to be the associated conditional buildings insurance policy they think they must take out in order to release the funds.
At this stage they should make their client aware they do not need to take out this unnecessary policy as it is already insured, and advising the lender with a copy of the current buildings insurance certificate.
Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen and the leaseholder ends up dual insured; paying for the new unnecessary policy and the existing buildings policy through their service charge or insurance rent.
Close attention
Those falling into this trap can often go on paying for two insurance policies for a number of years, with leaseholders only finding out about the dual situation when they come to make a claim or they pay close attention to their service charge demand.
Even when they do discover they are dual insured, it can be quite challenging to sort matters out. The managing agent often is asked by the leaseholder to refund the insurance element of the service charge as in their view they’ve already made their own insurance arrangements. As a result, the managing agents find themselves in the position of having to refuse the request and explaining building insurance matters, in the process possibly ending up looking like the bad guys looking for any excuse to extract more money from the leaseholder.
When the leaseholder does go back to the mortgage company or their insurer with evidence of the dual insurance arrangements, they can find themselves going through a number of hoops in order to have the duplicate policy cancelled and their premium refunded. In our experience some insurers promptly cancel the policy and refund the current year’s premium, whilst others insist on an exchange of correspondence with the block insurer before considering cancelling a policy.
Whilst there’s no guarantee that a leaseholder can reclaim a full refund of the whole current year’s premiums, they can find themselves even more out of pocket if the insurer refuses to refund previous years’ premiums.
In writing
In the event that you find yourself in the same situation and have problems trying to resolve your dual insurance issues, then make sure that you put your complaint in writing to the insurer and the mortgage company. If they fail to deal with matters to your satisfaction then you are entitled to take your complaint to the Financial Ombudsmen Service that can be found at
www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk.
What to do if you think you have dual buildings insurance.
Obtain a copy of the current buildings insurance certificate from your agent or landlord. This must be provided within 21 days of a written request and may incur a small charge.
Contact your insurer and mortgage company with copies of the proof of dual insurance seeking cancellation of the relevant policy and a refund of your premiums.