Safety Net Home Protection Option

What is Safety Net Home Protection Option?

Safety Net option gives your home extra cover.

If your home is damaged by an insured event and the cost of repairing or replacing it exceeds your sum insured, then we will pay up to an extra 25%* of your home sum insured to rebuild or repair it.

Why have we introduced Safety Net Home Protection Option?

Even though you may do everything right to insure your home for its true replacement cost, disasters like a large storm or bushfire can cause building costs to surge, leaving you without enough cover to rebuild your home.

With this option in place if your home is damaged by an insured event and the cost of repairing or replacing it exceeds your sum insured, then we will pay up to an extra 25%* of your home sum insured to rebuild or repair it.

To help avoid the misfortune of being under-insured, you may want to add this option to your Home building policies.

Does Safety Net cost anything?

Yes all our optional covers cost an additional premium but the Safety Net Option will cost less than what it would cost to increase your Home sum insured by 25%*.

Can I reduce the sum insured on my home by 25%* to offset Safety Net and possibly save on my premium?

Deliberately insuring for less than the real rebuilding cost of your home could lead to a significant financial loss, and we dont want to see this happen to any homeowner.

Unfortunately if you are seriously underinsured, we may not be able to offer insurance or we might not agree to a change to decrease your home sum insured.

Can I decide that I dont want Safety Net?

As this is an option for all Home Insurance policies, you can choose to include it on your policy.

We know from experience that building costs can dramatically surge after widespread damage occurs. With Safety Net, you are better protected against this problem (and provided you are not seriously underinsured before the insured event) are more likely to be able to rebuild or repair your home to the standard it was before the damage.

Unfortunately, we cannot rebuild your home if the sum insured falls short. All we can do is pay you your sum insured. Then it is your decision as to what gets rebuilt. We would rather see you back into your new home of the same size and quality as it was before the loss, and with this option in place, we will pay up to an extra 25%* of your sum insured, to rebuild or repair your home.

Choosing your sum insured

Unless you recently built your home and you know its replacement cost, most people need help to work out the sum insured on their home.

For assistance you can choose to use an expert such as a quantity surveyor or licensed builder to tell you what it costs to completely rebuild your home using new materials and to comply with current building by-laws and regulations.

If you dont want to pay for an expert, you can:

• Use our building cost calculator as a guide to help you estimate the sum insured, or
• Call us and we will take you through our building costs calculator and tell you what it suggests.

* Note: with Suncorp Platinum Insurance, we will pay up to an extra 30% of your home sum insured.