What is the home insurance waiting period?

The waiting period is one of the terms that come up most often in the context of taking out insurance and particularly about insurance or mutual health insurance. However, home insurance is also affected by the existence of this period.

Definition of the waiting period

The waiting period represents the existence of a period during which the insured is not covered by his insurer. This latency time must be taken into account in order not to find yourself without coverage about your home insurance. It is important to understand that no guarantee can operate during this period, although you have taken out a home insurance contract.

Not to be confused with home insurance deductible, the waiting period is a way for the insurance company to protect itself from an ill-intentioned insured. The latter being aware that a disaster will occur soon could take out insurance to protect themselves against it. The existence of this delay prevents him from receiving compensation immediately after the occurrence of this disaster and he could then not benefit from his insurer.

Would you like to take out home insurance with little or no waiting period? In this case, we advise you to compare the offers on the market to identify the one that meets your expectations. Reassure me helps you in this process by providing you with its online home insurance comparator, online and free.

Application to home insurance

In the context of home insurance, the waiting period corresponds to the period which elapses between a claim and the start of the payment of indemnities by the insurer. This latency period imposed by the insurance company does not however constitute an exclusion of guarantee strictly speaking, but a legal deadline.

Insurers are free to set the duration of the waiting period, which is not subject to any legal obligation on this specific point. It is up to you to check before taking out your home insurance contract what arrangements have been made by your insurer concerning it and you can ask for the duration when preparing an estimate. A waiting period that is too long can be detrimental to you since you will need financial means after a disaster to repair the damage suffered; so be sure to inform yourself about it.

Deadline for taking out home insurance

The subscription period is, in the same way as the waiting period, common to all existing insurance policies. It still has its specificities when applied to home insurance.

Definition of the subscription period

When an individual wishes to take out home insurance, after signing the contract, the insurer may examine the file, in particular, to assess the risks that the person presents. The period between the delivery of the signed contract to your insurance company and its validation by the latter is called the subscription period.

At the end of this period, your insurer gives you the final insurance contract if it is validated; during this time, you will be covered for a certain number of risks, cover materialized by the note of cover. This guarantees you have protection in the event of a claim occurring between the delivery of the signed contract to your insurer and the final validation by the latter.

Application to home insurance

The cover note is an agreement signed between the insured and the insurer materializing a temporary agreement during the examination of the file of the first by the second. It indicates the essential elements of the cover taken out, but its content and form are not subject to legal provisions. It is a temporary means of proof existing during the subscription period, which allows the customer to be covered after signing the contract that he has accepted.

The subscription period ends in two cases:

if the contract is accepted by the insurer, who sends a final version to the customer;
if the contract is rejected by the insurer, in which case the insured will not be covered beyond this period.

In all cases, the subscription period ends on the date indicated on the cover note, which assumes remuneration to the insurer for its temporary cover.

The notice period for home insurance

The termination period kicks in when you or your insurer decides to terminate the contract to which you had subscribed earlier. Special provisions are to be taken in this context, because the termination periods cannot suffer any delay, on one side or the other.

Definition of the notice period

First of all, it is necessary to know that you can now cancel your home insurance contract more easily, namely any time after the first-anniversary date of the subscription. This possibility follows the law on consumption, known as the Hamon law and dating from January 1, 2015, which goes in the direction of the consumer by allowing him to play the competition more easily, and therefore to change his home insurance in favor of another more covering or less expensive offer.

The cancellation period then represents the period that elapses between the notification of the cancellation made by the insurer or the insured and the effective enforcement of this termination. Both parties must make specific provisions regarding these deadlines to comply with the legal framework and to notify the recipient of the notification in good time so that he can make the necessary arrangements.

Application to home insurance

You have the possibility of terminating your home insurance contract for several reasons: increase in the premium by your insurer without modification of the insured risk, at the end of the contract, in the event of a change in your personal or professional situation which modifies the risk that you present …

The termination periods vary on a case-by-case basis depending on the reason invoked:

change of residence: termination by registered letter with acknowledgment of receipt (AR), which takes effect 1 month after receipt of this acknowledgment;
change of situation resulting in an aggravation of the risk: notification by registered letter with AR within 15 days of the change; the insurer can make you a proposal to modify the contract which leads to termination if it is not accepted;
change in a situation presenting a reduction in risk: report by registered letter with AR within 3 months of the change in question; however, the reduction of risk very rarely leads to a desire for termination;
on the expiry date of the contract: by registered letter with AR 2 months before the expiry date (the insurer must notify you of this termination date under penalty of tacit renewal of the contract):
- if the insurer notifies you 15 days before this deadline, he must simply indicate the date in question;
- if the insurer notifies you less than 15 days before this deadline, you have 20 days from the date the reminder was sent;
- if the insurer does not notify you, you can cancel whenever you want once the due date has passed.
increase in the deductible or premium: immediate termination possible by the insured within 1 month by registered letter;
non-payment of the premium to the insurer: the insured has 10 days after the due date to pay the amount of his premium; if he does not, the insurer sends him a letter of formal notice and the insured is granted a new period of 30 days, after which a final period of 10 days is made available to him to pay his insurer; otherwise, the latter can take him to court and terminate his contract.

the home insurance withdrawal period

Definition of the withdrawal period

Following his subscription to insurance, the insured may realize that the general and/or specific conditions do not suit him in the end, or that the insurance premium required of him for the risks covered is too high to its budget, for example. Whatever the reasons, you have the possibility of withdrawing and thus canceling the subscription to this contract in certain particular cases.

The withdrawal period represents the period that the insured is granted following the signing of his insurance contract. In the case of home insurance as for other insurance, it is however impossible for you to benefit from this right if you have subscribed to your contract in a “normal” way (signed directly in the agency). It is important to find out about the cases that would allow you to benefit from this withdrawal period.

Application to home insurance

You can then exercise your right of withdrawal within 14 days of signing the contract in question, provided that you have subscribed to it in one of the following ways:

you have been canvassed by telephone or at your home;
you concluded the contract online;
you responded to a direct mail (classic or online).

In only one of these three cases will it be possible for you to go back and cancel the subscription to the home insurance contract, within 14 days. You must send your insurer a registered letter with AR for this period, without needing to justify yourself. You still need to know that you will no longer be able to retract if you have benefited from compensation paid in the event of a claim occurring during these 14 days (you have therefore made your guarantee work).

In addition, you will be required to pay the insurance premium in proportion to the number of days insured during the withdrawal period. Your insurer must reimburse you for the sums already paid within 30 days of the withdrawal, after which legal interest applies.

Deadline for reporting a claim to home insurance

Definition of the declaration period

When a loss occurs, the insured has a legal period to declare it to his insurance company. Depending on the nature of the claim, the deadlines invoked may vary but must always be respected, otherwise, the compensation provided for will be canceled or reduced. It is important to know that this claim reporting period begins when the insured becomes aware of its occurrence and not when the claim has been declared.

This small nuance however makes a big difference., in particular when it is for an insured to be compensated for the damage suffered. For example, if a burglary occurs while the insured is on vacation, the legal time limit for reporting the claim will not begin until he returns, when he can see it.

Application to home insurance

It is therefore when the insured notices the damage caused by a claim that the reporting period offered to him begins. These deadlines, depending on the nature of the claim, are as follows:

theft, burglary, or vandalism: 2 working days;
fire, water damage, explosion, glass breakage, or any other specificity detailed in the contract (generally a multi-risk home): 5 working days;
natural or technological disaster: 10 working days after the publication of the ministerial decree declaring the disaster as such.

Failure to comply with these deadlines exposes you, in the best of cases, to a delay in compensation from home insurance, and may go as far as the forfeiture of your rights to compensation; the insurer will however have to prove that this delay in declaration caused him harm. Moreover, these deadlines are incompressible but can be extended at the discretion of your insurance company (to be checked in each case), probably subject to an increase in the corresponding premium. In the event of a claim, the legal retention period for documents related to this claim is 10 years.

Concerning the deadlines in the context of home insurance, it is necessary for each insured to take stock by noting the existing legal provisions and those taken by the general and specific conditions of his contract. Failure to comply with the deadlines prescribed for each situation may expose you to a forfeiture of your rights to compensation, or even to termination (for example in the case of non-payment of the insurance premium.

The effective date of the home insurance contract

The effective date of the home insurance contract is an unknown specificity in the field of insurance. Most policyholders tend to think that the contract necessarily takes effect on its subscription date, which is not always the case.

Definition of the effective date of the contract

First of all, it is necessary to distinguish three different dates which fall within the framework of the subscription to a home insurance contract:

the subscription date: this is the precise moment at which the client subscribes to the contract;
the due date: represents the date on which the insured is required to pay his premium to his insurer (main due date = premium / secondary due dates = contributions);
the effective date: constitutes the date on which the contract effectively enters into action and covers the customer for the risks to which he has subscribed.

These 3 dates can be separated and set at the discretion of the insured, in agreement with his insurance company.

Application to home insurance

It turns out that the insured may have specific needs, or even find themselves faced with specific situations when it comes to subscribing to a home insurance contract. For example, the moment when he registers his cash receipts (generally the payment of his salary by his employer) is a determining factor. He can then choose to pay his contributions at the beginning of the month, just after having received his salary, so as not to risk ending up just at the end of the month and not being able to pay the corresponding contribution.

Furthermore, if an insured decides to change insurer, he can provide for this by taking out a new home insurance contract in advance, although he is still covered by the previous one. This maneuver allows him not to find himself without cover during the period during which he will seek a new insurer. In this way, he can decide to set the effective date of the contract when the previous one expires, without the two overlapping but the new one taking over from the other.