Walk into any broker's office on a Tuesday morning and the conversation has shifted. Your clients aren't just asking about buildings insurance anymore. They're mentioning boiler replacement costs. They're worried about what happens if the electrician's work goes wrong. They're concerned about whether their contents policy covers a newly fitted kitchen. These aren't abstract concerns. They reflect real spending patterns that matter to your risk assessment and your product positioning.
According to Checkatrade's 2024 survey, UK households spent an average of £3,247 on home services in the past year. That's not a small figure. It's not something sitting in a savings account either. It's money actively flowing toward plumbing, electrical work, general maintenance and renovations. For insurance brokers, this data should set off something important. It tells you where your clients' assets are at risk and where they're vulnerable.
The Renovation Boom and Your Liability Exposure
Home improvement spending has become normalised. The Office for National Statistics noted that spending on alterations and improvements to dwellings increased significantly post-pandemic, with many households redirecting discretionary income toward their properties rather than holidays or retail. This matters to you because renovations create liability gaps.
Consider a typical scenario. Your client gets a kitchen installed for £15,000. The fitter causes water damage during the installation. The client assumes the tradesperson's public liability covers it. They don't check. Three months later, the kitchen tiles start lifting. Damp appears in the adjoining bedroom. Your client turns to their buildings insurer, who quite reasonably points out that the damage occurred during works, not from a covered peril. Now your client is facing a dispute with the contractor's insurer, and their own policy has a claim dispute on their record.
This scenario is becoming increasingly common. Your value as a broker lies in identifying these gaps before the damage occurs. Are your clients getting certificates of insurance from tradespeople? Do they understand the difference between a tradesperson's public liability and their own buildings coverage? These conversations, once niche, now need to happen regularly.
Boiler Breakdown and Extended Warranty Trends
Boiler cover has shifted from a nice-to-have to something clients actively search for online before they contact you. The reason is straightforward. A new boiler costs between £2,000 and £5,000 installed. An emergency call-out costs £150 to £300. Most households don't have that cash sitting aside.
What's interesting is the disconnect. Many clients already buy boiler cover from their energy supplier or through standalone providers. They don't realise they're paying for it twice, or that it's excluded from their home insurance. When a broker takes five minutes to audit their existing cover, they often find the client is paying £120 annually for boiler cover while their buildings insurer specifically excludes mechanical breakdown anyway.
Your role here is practical. You're not selling a product. You're rationalising their spending and ensuring they have proper cover. This builds trust faster than any marketing campaign because it saves them money or prevents a catastrophic shortfall.
Garden and External Work: The Underestimated Exposure
Garden spending is up. Not slightly. Significantly. Angling Trust data shows that garden centre visits and landscaping work have become routine expenditure items for many households. A new patio, boundary fencing, decking, or garden room can run to £10,000 or more.
Here's where brokers often miss an opportunity. Clients assume buildings insurance covers new garden structures. It usually does, but with conditions. The work must be carried out to building regulation standards or at least to reasonable standards. If your client hires someone cheap, gets no paperwork, and the fence collapses a year later in poor weather, the insurer's first question won't be about the weather. It will be about the installation quality.
A proper conversation with clients about garden work tells you several things. First, it reveals their risk appetite and spending patterns. Second, it shows you where they might benefit from contractors' all risks policies if they're planning larger projects. Third, it flags where their buildings sum insured might be understated if they've significantly improved the property.
The Energy Efficiency Investment Question
Government schemes like the Great British Insulation Scheme are now directing households toward loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, and heat pump installations. This is spending on invisible improvements that increase property value but also change the risk profile for insurance purposes.
A heat pump installation, for example, requires electrical work and often heating system changes. That's not something a standard buildings policy automatically covers during the installation phase. The property's heat loss rating improves, which might affect heating-related claims. The electrical work needs to be certified, which ties back to tradesperson liability again.
Brokers who stay across these schemes and ask clients about their involvement can position themselves as knowledgeable advisors, not just premium calculators. You might recommend that a client undertaking a heat pump installation adds contractors' all risks for the duration of works. You might note that their buildings sum insured should reflect the improved property afterwards.
What This Means for Your Client Conversations
The trend is clear. Home services spending is now a core part of household budgeting, not a discretionary expense. For insurance brokers, this creates both a responsibility and an opportunity.
The responsibility is to ask better questions during renewals. What work have they had done? What's planned? Do they have copies of building regulation certificates? Who did the work and do they know if it was insured? These questions take an extra five minutes but they change the quality of your risk assessment fundamentally.
The opportunity is positioning yourself as a broker who understands property investment properly. You're not just processing buildings claims. You're protecting the capital your clients are deploying into their homes. That's a conversation worth having, and it's one that clients increasingly want to have with someone who gets it.
The numbers tell the story. Your clients are spending serious money on their homes. Your job is making sure that spending is properly protected. That's where the real value lies.
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