Customers who are refused flood insurance advised to use brokers

Insurance customers who are being refused insurance because they live close to a river — even though they live on a steep incline — should be using insurance brokers to fight their cause.

Speaking at a flooding conference in Cork, insurance broker turned public loss adjustor Eamonn Downey said “illogical” decisions to refuse flood and subsidence cover — even though a person may live up a hill or have underpinned their house — were due to industry’s over-reliance on a ‘geocoding’ system that arbitrarily refuses to cover houses in certain locations.

He said brokers have sufficient financial clout with insurance companies to “make them see logic where they don’t want to” and he advised householders to use brokers as “they will ensure that your policy is sufficiently broad”.