Ever heard that you should "only insure the stuff you can't afford"? - well now you can

You may have heard this pearl of wisdom before but until recently most insurance companies only offered 'the works' for home insurance so your only only option was to buy expensive cover. This has now changed, well at least if you live in Queensland; IAG has recently launched a new product called InsureLite. Some of the key features are:

1. $5k or $10k franchise i.e. pays out your full loss as long as the loss is greater than $5k or $10k
   
2. Covers the roof over your head not the nice to haves (garages, sheds, pools, fences etc)
   
3. Pre-defined replacement options (in the case of total loss) to the value of $150,000 or $200,000
   

The third feature is effectively 'insuring off the plan' which has some great benefits:

• It is clear for both you and the insurer what you will get for your money which should, all other things being equal, mean you get a roof over your head faster
• You don't need to try guestimate your sum insured - after all estimating change in building codes, change in material costs, demand inflation following a catastrophe etc is far from straight forward even for professional estimators
  
• Insurer's can get benefit from scale because they are not rebuilding hundreds of different types of houses

We think InsureLite is a breath of fresh air. In order get the right balance of coverage and affordability just mix with a liberal amount of self-insuring and PeerCovering.