Before summer storms: check your home insurance and your excess
Spring is a useful time to check what your home and contents policy would actually pay. Review your cover, replacement costs and excess before severe weather puts them to the test.
Published by Dolla Team on 2026-10-18.
Sources, dates and corrections follow Dolla's Editorial Standards.
Before summer storms: check your home insurance and your excess
A home insurance renewal is easy to file away once the payment goes through. But the premium only tells you what cover costs. It does not tell you whether the policy still fits your home, belongings or bank balance.
October is a useful prompt to look again. The Bureau of Meteorology identifies October to April as a period of higher severe-weather risk across Australia. Your local hazards will vary, but checking cover now gives you time to ask questions before you need to claim.
Here is a practical review for spring 2026, whether you own a house, live in an apartment or rent.
Start with what you are actually insuring
Building cover and contents cover do different jobs. One concerns the structure; the other concerns belongings such as furniture, clothing and appliances.
Renters should not assume the landlord's building insurance protects their possessions. Apartment owners should check the building arrangements with their strata body, then consider their own contents separately. Moneysmart's contents insurance guide, updated on 2 October 2026, explains these distinctions and the limits that can apply to individual items.
Walk through each room and make a short inventory. Include the ordinary things you would have to buy again, not just your most expensive electronics. Check whether valuable items need to be individually listed and whether belongings taken outside the home need optional portable cover.
Revisit the amount of cover
An old insurance figure can quietly become out of date after renovations, new purchases or changes in rebuilding costs. Underinsurance means the cover falls short of the cost of repairing, rebuilding or replacing what you lose, as Moneysmart's underinsurance guidance explains.
For a house, review a current rebuilding estimate and ask your insurer how it relates to the policy's sum insured. For contents, compare your inventory with what replacing those items would cost today. Keep the estimate and the date you prepared it with your policy records.
If the figures look very different from your current cover, make that a question for the insurer. Avoid reducing the insured amount simply to make a quote fit your budget without understanding the potential gap.
Read the cover details before comparing prices
Pull out the policy schedule, Key Fact Sheet and product disclosure statement. Moneysmart's home insurance guide, also updated on 2 October 2026, recommends comparing the same type and level of cover and checking exclusions, excesses and benefit limits.
Make a short list of questions:
- Are the weather risks relevant to my address covered, including flood, storm and fire?
- What exclusions or conditions apply to those events?
- What temporary accommodation benefit is available, and what dollar or time limit applies?
- What excess would apply to each type of claim?
Record any answer you need clarified in writing. A cheaper premium is useful only when you understand what you are buying.
Put the excess into your cash plan
The excess is the amount you contribute when claiming. Increasing it may reduce the premium, but check whether you could meet the higher amount when something goes wrong.
Consider an invented example: one quote saves A$180 a year but raises the excess from A$750 to A$1,500. That is A$15 a month saved, with A$750 more to contribute if a claim attracts that excess. The choice depends partly on the cash you can access, not just the annual saving.
Write the excess beside your available emergency savings. If you want to build a dedicated A$1,500 buffer from zero over 12 months, that means A$125 a month before interest. Treat this as a planning example, not a recommended excess or a complete emergency-fund target.
Dolla's free savings goal calculator can help you explore a saving timetable. Our guide to budgeting in a normal month can help you make room for the premium alongside other irregular bills.
One useful action today
Open your policy and note three things: the insured amounts, the relevant excesses and one question you cannot confidently answer. Send that question to your insurer and set a reminder to follow it up. A short review now can turn an automatic renewal into a decision you understand.