AA Home Insurance: Policies, Reviews & Verdict

AA offers good quality home insurance at affordable prices. While not the most comprehensive policies on the market, AA home insurance includes a good variety of benefits that will keep your home and its contents safe from the unexpected. Read on for more information on its policies, including a detailed price comparison, AA home insurance reviews, the login process and more.

What does AA home insurance cover?

The AA offers two different home insurance policies: AA Home Insurance and AA Home Insurance Plus. These can both be purchased as combined buildings and contents policies, or buildings insurance and contents insurance separately. The main difference between the two policies is the level of cover they offer.

AA Home Insurance is the more basic policy, including less features as standard, but customers have the option to add benefits onto this policy for an extra costs. AA Home Insurance Plus is the more comprehensive policy. Most of the extras customers can add onto the basic policy are included as standard in this one. It also has higher maximum claim limits.

There are advantages to both. AA Home Insurance Plus covers you for more possibilities without you having to add anything onto the policy. In this sense, it is a more complete policy. However, if you want a more flexible policy that is tailored to your needs, AA Home Insurance could be a better option; the extra add-ons let you build an individual policy where you pay for the cover you want and nothing more. This is great for households who know exactly the type of cover that is most suited to their home.

Let’s have a look at some of the benefits these two policies include.

What is cover for student possessions?This benefit means your child’s possessions while in halls of residence or another type of student accommodation will be insured under your policy, as long as their permanent address continues to be your home address. Be aware that it only includes loss or theft if the offence was committed with forcible/violent entry or exit from the building. It also does not cover the loss of cash.

Are my possessions covered away from home?

A major question to ask when buying home insurance is, are your contents, valuables and personal belongings covered when you take them out of the house? For example, if your mobile phone falls out of your pocket when you’re on your early sunday morning jogand the screen cracks, is it covered?

With AA Home Insurance Plus, you will be safe. Your valuables (your mobile phone falls under this category) and personal belongings are covered for loss and damage away from home for up to £5,000. They must be in your custody or control at the time of the incident, e.g. if your friend is holding your mobile phone when it gets stolen, you cannot claim for it. So make sure you keep hold of all of your possessions when out and about.

If you choose to take out the more basic AA Home Insurance policy, you can choose to add this type of cover on to your policy: it is not included as standard. If you wish to add this cover on, its official name is Accidental loss or damage cover for valuables, personal belongings and money (a bit long-winded but it does what it says on the tin!).

Optional extras: home emergency and legal expenses cover

As mentioned earlier, the basic AA Home Insurance policy comes with the option to add on cover to tailor the policy to your needs. Let’s have a look at the two main add-on options.

Legal expenses cover

This add-on covers you for any legal costs that might arise in relation to your home, for example, contract disputes. The cover includes access to a 24/7 legal helpline and an online legal document service. Through this service you have access to a wide range of free legal documents and pre-prepared letters that are approved by a legal professional. You can simply download one, sign it and use it.

• To access the legal helpline, call: 0161 428 7039


• To access the online legal documents service, head to: theAA.com/legal-documents

The maximum limit for any claim is £50,000. It will not cover you for disputes that cost less than £250.

Home emergency response

Home emergency response cover means you are covered for any emergencies that happen in your home, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. For example, if a pipe bursts, the AA will send an approved tradesman to perform an emergency repair. It will cover the costs of labour and any material needed to repair the damage up to £500 per time.

This add-on covers you for emergencies related to plumbing, drainage, internal electrics, windows, keys and locks, wasps and hornets, water supply pipes and internal domestic gas supply. It does not include cover for boilers. If you want to make sure your boiler is covered, you will need to look elsewhere for boiler cover.

Remember, if you suspect a gas leak, call the National Gas Emergency Service before doing anything else! Once you have reported it to the National Gas Emergency Service, you can ring the AA to tell it about the emergency.
Call the National Gas Emergency Service on: 0800 111 999

AA holiday home insurance

AA Insurance also offers home insurance for holiday homes in:

• The UK
• Spain
• France
• Portugal
• Italy
• Greece
• The Republic of Ireland
• Southern Cyprus
• Bulgaria

This features contents cover and buildings insurance, including cover for outbuildings, garages and swimming pools. It also includes up to £1,000 of cover for emergency travel to your holiday home in the event of an emergency, e.g. a flood.

Find out more about holiday-home insurance, what it includes, excludes and what to keep in mind when shopping for a good policy, in our complete guide to holiday-home insurance.

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AA home insurance prices: how do they compare to other providers?

To gain an idea of how AA home insurance prices compare to other provides, we performed a comparison of basic AA home insurance (e.g. no extras such as accidental damage cover) with the market average*.

As the graph above shows, all basic AA home insurance policies (combined policy, buildings only and contents only) are cheaper than the insurance industry average. The combined policy is quite significantly cheaper than the average, and considering it still includes a good range of benefits, it is definitely good value for money. But remember that when you start to add extras on, the price will rise.

While these prices look great, we have found from reviews that AA Insurance has a tendency to significantly increase its prices when customers renew policies (read below to find out more). So AA home insurance may seem great and cheap for the first year of cover, but you might want to reassess and look elsewhere when it comes to year 2.

Also, keep in mind that AA home insurance policies have a £100 compulsory excess. While this is not extortionate, some providers only charge £50. Excess is made up of compulsory excess (the amount the company requires you to pay when you claim) and voluntary excess (the amount you agree to pay when you claim). The greater your excess is, the lower your premium will be, but it also means you need to pay more yourself when you make a claim.

*comparison based on 3 bed semi-detached house in London with a rebuild cost of £224,000, total contents valued at £30,000 and an optional excess of £100.

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AA home insurance reviews

Is AA home insurance any good? According to both customers and professionals, AA home insurance is not amazing, but it is also far from the worst available.

Customer reviews of AA home insurance

We have taken a look at reviews specifically related to AA home insurance (not AA insurance as a whole) on review sites Feefo and Smart Money People, and, in general, reviews are fairly positive.

Customers on Feefo rate AA home insurance an impressive 4.6/5. From 2,010 reviews, most praise the AA for having reasonable pricing as well as friendly and efficient customer service.

A very good price and easy to sign up to - first the AA compared very well against most other insurance companies on price and content. Once I selected AA insurance it was very easy to complete the signing up process. Derek

While customer reviews on Feefo are good to take a look at, it’s important to note that leaving a review on the site is encouraged when customers sign up to AA home insurance. This means that a lot of the reviews are from new customers who have not had to do much with AA, i.e. make a claim or ring customer services with a problem, meaning reviews tend to lean more towards positive experiences.

Smart Money People does not have that many reviews (only 25), but we noticed a similarity between these reviews and AA insurance reviews as a whole. In our overall analysis of the AA, we found that a lot of customers complain about sharp increases in their premium prices when they renew. This also seems to be the case with reviews of AA home insurance on Smart Money People.

The policy seems pretty robust. They insist on putting it up by about £100 per year until I ring them and then the price goes down to just over last years price....Why oh why do they get greedy? Niel

To avoid AA catching you out in this way, make sure you know how and when you need to renew your policy. If you get an astronomical renewal quote: don’t just accept it! Get in touch with AA Insurance and they will likely lower it.

What do the professionals think?

Defaqto - a financial review website that uses an insurance policy’s features to give it a star rating out of five - awarded the AA home insurance policies the following ratings for 2019.

From these ratings, we can see that the AA Home Insurance Plus policy is very extensive and offers an excellent range of benefits according to the Defaqto experts. AA Home Insurance does not rate that badly either, especially for a basic policy whose very definition is to offer less benefits.

The financial advice site Fairer Finance offers both a product score and a customer ratings score. Its product score is based on how many and what benefits a policy includes as standard. To be awarded a full five stars, the policy must reach or exceed Fairer Finance’s Red Line Requirements. So, how does AA home insurance rank?

While AA home insurance does not rank badly with Fairer Finance, only the building insurance offered in the AA Home Insurance Plus policy reaches the Red Line Requirement, meaning it offers a satisfactory amount of benefits. In all other areas, AA home insurance falls slightly short, especially for the contents insurance offered in the basic policy.

When it comes to its Fairer Finance customer review score, AA home insurance only achieves 55%. Here, it rates particularly badly for how transparent customers think the provider is: only 41%. This sentiment is similarly expressed in Which’s review.

In 2019, Which? placed AA home insurance 23rd out of 34 providers for customer satisfaction. In its five star ratings for different customer aspects, it only awarded 2/5 for ‘transparency of charges and penalties’. There is therefore an indication that the AA is not always upfront with its customers about additional charges on its home insurance policies.

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AA home insurance login

Luckily for all AA home insurance customers, they can manage everything to do with their policy online through their online account. This includes having access to all your home insurance policy documents whenever you need them, being able to check your personal details and keep an eye on your policy renewal date.

We have written a step by step guide on how to log in to your AA home insurance account, including what to do if you have forgotten your password and how to set up an account if you don’t have one. If you’re having problems with the AA home insurance login process, head to our AA login guide for a little bit of help: you’ll be logged in in no time.

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AA home insurance contact: enquiries, renewals and cancellations

If you have a general enquiry for AA Insurance that is not directly related to your AA home insurance policy, you can find all the AA contact details you need in our general AA Insurance guide.

If you have a specific question about your home insurance policy, here is the AA home insurance contact number to ring.

Renew your policy

AA Insurance will send you a letter 3 weeks before your renewal is due, to confirm your policy details and the new price of your premium.

If you set up automatic renewal when you took out your policy, your policy will automatically renew after 12 months, for another 12 months. If you do not want it to renew automatically, call the relevant number listed in the below policy cancelation section.

If you do not have automatic renewal, you will need to ring AA Insurance in order to renew your policy after receiving your renewal pack. To do this, call: 0344 854 0100.

When you renew your policy, any add-ons you have included will also renew unless you tell the AA otherwise. If you want to take off or add-on any extras when you renew, ring the relevant number listed below:

1. Combined buildings and contents policy: 0343 316 1617


2. Buildings insurance only: 0344 854 0100


3. Contents insurance only: 0344 854 0100

How do I cancel AA home insurance?

You can cancel any AA home insurance policy within 14 days of taking out the policy and get a full refund. If you cancel after this time, you will not get a refund, so could stand to lose a lot of money if you have paid the entirety of your premium.

Here are the phone numbers to ring to cancel your policy.

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How do I make an AA home insurance claim?

If you have a home insurance policy and need to make a claim, you need to ring the claims number listed in your policy summary. You should try to do this as soon as possible after the damage or loss has occurred. Make sure you have your policy number to hand.

The call agent will probably ask you to fill out a claims form. Fill this out and post it to the address listed on the form as soon as you can. If you are asked to include any extra information, such as photos of evidence, send this along with the claims form.

In the case of burglary and theft, you should ring the police before you contact AA Insurance. The police will give you a crime reference number; you will need to quote this when you later place a claim with the AA.

Reporting a home emergency

If you have a home emergency and have AA home emergency response cover, call the following number to receive immediate assistance.

• Home emergency response: 0800 316 3983


• If you are deaf or hard of hearing, you can send an SMS message to: 07860 002 999

Claiming on legal expenses cover

You can make a claim on your AA home legal expenses cover over the phone or by sending a letter. You should try to contact the AA as soon as possible after the incident has occurred, but you must do so within 180 days for your claim to be accepted.

• To claim by phone, call 0161 428 7039 and ask for claims form.


• To claim by letter, send your letter to the following address

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Selectra’s verdict

Pros: good quality policies with a decent range of benefits, good value for money (at least for the first year), useful online system to keep track of policy.

Cons: prices rise significantly when customers renew, lack of transparency when it comes to charges and penalties, boiler cover not included in home emergency response add-on, can get more comprehensive cover elsewhere.

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Data and information correct as of August 2019.

All material on this page and the selectra.co.uk website is for information purposes only and does not constitute any form of financial advice. Selectra.co.uk is not responsible for any consequences that might arise from your use of the information provided.

Other providers are available and the best deal for you will depend on your individual circumstances. Please do your own research and seek professional advice if necessary (moneyadviceservice.org.uk offers free, independent advice on all financial issues).