Understanding your home insurance costs

Home insurance premiums can rise year to year. But what impacts the cost of your home insurance premium, what should you look out for when you renew, and how can you reduce your costs at renewal?

Why are home insurance costs changing?

Insurance prices are generally going up, leaving people wondering what’s behind the rise in home insurance costs when it’s time to renew.

Your premium may have changed based on factors including economic trends and the climate, as well as details about you, who’s on your policy and what you’re insuring.

Economic trends – inflation and shipping delays are contributing to higher costs for repairs, labour, materials, building supplies and the cost of contents throughout the home. This means it’s more expensive to rebuild homes and replace the items inside, and these higher costs can increase insurance prices.

Climate trends – weather events like bushfires, floods and storms are happening more frequently and severely. This increases the level of insurance risk alongside rising costs associated with managing claims, like the cost of skilled trades and raw materials needed to repair and rebuild.

Reinsurance costs – as Australia continues to experience more severe weather events, reinsurance costs have gone up. Reinsurance is insurance for insurers – it helps guarantee our ability to pay out claims after a major weather event.

Your home, property or contents – insurance premiums generally reflect the likelihood of claims occurring in the future and the anticipated costs of a claim, if one were to occur. As a consequence of estimating future costs, these estimates can change from year to year even if your personal circumstances have not changed.

Covering what matters most to you

It can be easy to compare home insurance policies on price alone, but it’s even more important to make sure your policy covers what matters to you, from a brand like NRMA Insurance - Australia’s most trusted insurance brand, 3 years in a row1.

Here are a few things to consider when reviewing your cover. If you’d like to update your policy, you can make most changes in your online account or the app, but you can also call us on 132 132 to make updates over the phone.

Have you reviewed the sum insured of your buildings and contents?
You can use our home building and contents calculators to get an estimate of what it might cost to repair or rebuild your home, and repair or replace the items you’ve covered in it. Having an accurate sum insured means you won’t be over or underinsuring.

Have any life events or changes meant your cover needs have changed?
Have you made significant renovations to your home? Perhaps your living situation with your spouse has changed? Make sure you’ve got the right people listed on your policy and that you have adequate coverage to suit your life stage or home updates.

Have you considered what level of coverage best suits your needs, budget and life stage?
We have a range of home insurance policies to help you find one that suits your needs.

Have you reviewed which items you’re covering and are the maximum limits appropriate?
Make sure you’ve checked the limits for any items you’re insuring like jewellery or hearing aids and that these are right for you. Check your policy for what you’re covered for and not covered for. 

How can I control the costs of my home insurance policy?

Here are some ways you might be able to control the costs of your home insurance policy.

Consider your excess – often a higher excess can mean lower premiums which could help you manage your insurance costs month to month or year to year. An excess is your contribution to the claim.

Our customer discounts – we offer a range of discounts that could apply to eligible insurance policies: 

  • Our Relationship Discount – you could qualify for a Relationship Discount when you’ve had an eligible policy with us for 5 years in a row2.
  • Our Multi-Product Discount – you could qualify for a Multi-Product Discount when you have 2 or more eligible policies with us3. For more information about how our discounts work, visit our customer discounts page.

Change how you pay – for most policies, you can change the frequency you pay your premiums to fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or annually at no additional cost. This could make it easier for you to manage your budget and insurance costs.

Why should I renew with NRMA Insurance?

As Australia’s most trusted insurance brand 3 years in a row1, we’ve been protecting what matters most to Australians for almost 100 years.
But what do you get for renewing your home insurance policy with NRMA Insurance?

Here when disaster strikes

We strive to be the first insurer in and last insurer out during major disasters. That means you’ve got real people to talk about what to do after a major event and how to recover.

Service that suits your needs

Whether you want to give us a call, use our app or manage your insurance online, we’re here to help wherever you are.

Rewards and offers 

With our Help Hub, you can get access to offers and discounts, discover safety challenges to help reduce your risk in and outside of the home, and get Priority Assistance.

Lifetime guarantee 

We provide a lifetime guarantee on the workmanship of all authorised repairs to your home’s buildings.

Ready to renew your home insurance policy?

Once you’ve checked your policy coverage suits your needs, you can log in to get started.

   

Things you should know

  1. NRMA Insurance has been awarded Australia’s most trusted general insurance brand in the Roy Morgan Trusted Brand Awards 2022-2024.

  2. Any applicable discounts may be subject to minimum premiums. Discounts only apply until a minimum premium is reached. When we determine your premium on renewal, we may also limit any increases or decreases in your premium by considering factors such as your previous year’s premium amount. You may not save more by staying with us longer if a minimum premium is reached, or we have limited increases or decreases in your premium.

  3. Any applicable discounts may be subject to minimum premiums. Discounts only apply until a minimum premium is reached. When we determine your premium on renewal, we may also limit any increases or decreases in your premium by considering factors such as your previous year’s premium amount. You may not save more with more eligible products if a minimum premium is reached, or we have limited increases or decreases in your premium. When we complete the Multi-Product Discount calculation, we will use the policy start date of your policy, not the date that you purchase your policy. As such, policies must be purchased in order of their start date so that the discount can be appropriately applied.

    Any applicable discount is applied in tiers based on the number of eligible policies only. Maximum tier reached at 9 eligible policies. Existing policies will not be eligible for any new discount tier until renewal. We sometimes refer to this as the “multi-policy discount.”