A significant amount of renters continue to be acutely vulnerable to financial loss due to sweeping unawareness of tenants’ liability insurance, according to new YouGov research commissioned by general insurance provider Paymentshield.
The survey, conducted among 455 private tenants, found that 46% of renters don’t have a contents insurance policy in place. Of that group, 90% admit to not knowing what tenants’ liability insurance is, with 60% saying they’ve never heard of it.
Paymentshield has called the findings “alarming”, highlighting the scale of penalties renters face if landlords’ belongings are damaged at the end of their lease. The UK government’s latest English Private Landlord Survey revealed that only 60% of landlords and 54% of agents return the full deposit to the tenant when the tenancy ends. Of those that do not return in full, 65% of landlords and 60% of agents say this is due to damage to the property and its contents.
Rana Ali, Paymentshield’s director of distribution, said: “Leasing a property involves paying an often-hefty security deposit which is not guaranteed to be returned – at least in full – if the landlord’s belongings are damaged at the end of the tenancy. We also know that demand for furnished properties, already making up nearly a third of all rented properties, continues to grow and the potential costs of damaging the landlord’s belonging for these renters could be significant.
“Our latest research demonstrates that many leaseholders continue to be unaware of the merits of tenants liability insurance and therefore highly exposed to financial loss. Every single renter in the UK should have tenants’ liability as the absolute minimum protection, and we want to encourage an industry-wide effort to echo this message. That’s why we’ve specifically designed landlord and tenant modules on our freely accessible CPD hub, GI Academy – to help support advisers to better understand tenants’ needs and more effectively communicate to this cohort the long-term value of tenants’ liability insurance.”
