If you have ever thought about buying a holiday home in the sun, taking cheap holidays abroad every year and enjoying everything that goes with it, you may have been put off in the past by the legal complications involved in finding insurance in a different country.

You will therefore be pleased to know that Confused.com has recently launched a new service offering to take all the hassle out of getting insurance for your home away from home.

The new service, which is being arranged through Hiscox insurance, aims to save the customer all of the usual hassle that goes with insuring a property. People are often left confused and daunted by foreign legal systems, which often operate very differently to our own. Numerous rules are changed slightly, sometimes quite drastically, and getting a handle on them can be a nightmare.

The new service aims to cut out all of these issues and more by presenting an insurance package in exactly the same way as one from the UK would be purchased. Everything comes in English, the laws are all clear to understand and there are no foreign insurance brokers to deal with.

Carlton Hood, chief executive officer of Confused.com, said that people can now get home insurance “without the worry of language barriers or alien property laws”.

As the only service of its kind, it is expected to be very popular with UK property buyers and could lead the way for a whole host of such services springing up in the future.

In the light of research from insurance company, Sheila’s Wheels, parents would be well advised to check their home insurance, with the start of the school holidays upon us.

Their figures show that one in four children under the age of 16 has caused damage to, or broken, a piece of expensive electrical equipment at an average rate of £183 per child per year. Nationwide the total bill for repairs or replacement comes to a staggering £553 million a year.

The top five gadgets to be affected are DVD players (43%), games consoles such as the Wii, PS3 and X Box 360 (39%), TVs (34%), stereos (33%) and laptops (31%).

Accidental damage cover on the home contents policy can be worth its weight in gold but is often seen as a luxury which people cannot afford to pay for. This is perhaps the reason why 25% of families have had accidental damage caused by their offspring but only 20% have claimed on their insurance policy. There are also a surprising 17% of parents who have no home contents insurance whatsoever.

According to a spokesperson from Sheila’s Wheels, boredom is a prime contributory factor for damage during the school holidays: kids cooped up indoors during the great British summer have the capacity to inflict untold damage on delicate pieces of equipment. Then of course there is carelessness, with spilt drinks on computers being a perennial problem.

Scottish children come out worst in the statistics, causing a third more damage (£243 per year) than the UK as a whole, whilst children in the Midlands are much less likely to be caught behaving badly and cause a mere £105 on average each year.

You may well have wondered whether home insurance price comparison sites are all they’re cracked up to be. It seems, however, that they are inferior to comparable sites for motor insurance, according to a recent report by Defaqto, the independent provider of research into financial services. Their sixth annual report, “Home Insurance – Aggregation or aggravation” looked at 28 comparison sites and concluded that, in the home insurance market, it is definitely a case of “Buyer beware!”

Defaqto looked in depth at the service provided by the various sites, which included the big names, Comparethemarket, Confused.com, Gocompare, Tesco Compare, and Moneysupermarket. The report uncovered various pitfalls for those using the aggregators.

Firstly, no single comparison site covers the entire market, despite what you may think from reading the websites. Secondly, the large majority of sites are only capable of comparing prices rather than the small print. Thirdly, the comparisons are only as good as the assumptions made, when obtaining the quotes from insurance companies or brokers. They may not fit the bill precisely for you and it is therefore crucial for customers to check the quote carefully, in particular the level of excess on the policy. Fourthly, Defaqto concludes that many of the sites do not allow the customer to tailor the quote to their needs, for example obtaining cover for possessions taken out of the home such as cameras, watches and the like. If you do not take the time to check the small print, you could well find yourself out of pocket should a loss occur.

Mike Powell, a consultant at Defaqto, goes as far as saying that this could well be considered “poor practice” by the FSA. In his opinion there are only five true comparison sites, with the balance obtaining quotes through intermediaries which could be done easily by the client through a broker.

When planning that perfect wedding, the possibility of having to deal with increased home insurance costs is unlikely to cross your mind. However, a recent survey carried out by Halifax has found that wedding presents invariably increase the contents valuation of one’s home. In April, the top UK Insurance provider, Churchill, found that on average, newlywed couples received around 50 gifts apiece, costing a staggering ₤3,000 in total. As contents valuations increase, so do home insurance premiums.

So if you’re concerned that insurance glitches could spoil your wedding, here’s what you should bear in mind. Firstly, check with your insurance provider to ensure that your policy provides cover for any additional possessions you may have acquired following your wedding. This is particularly important if your insurance policy operates on a ‘sum-insured’ basis. However, some providers such as Churchill offer home insurance policies that provide cover for wedding presents during the weeks just before and after the big day. This allows newlyweds to go off on their honeymoon without fretting about uninsured possessions back home. Furthermore, insurance providers advise couples to bear in mind that expensive individual pieces such as wedding rings are unlikely to be covered by such policies and will need to be insured separately.

With the summer wedding season upon us, this issue is clearly one of considerable importance and certainly something to take note of if you’re planning on tying the knot anytime soon.

Last week the "Floods – One Year On" conference was hosted by the Association of British Insurers, and a warning was given that half a million homes deemed to be at risk of flooding may become uninsurable unless action is taken by the Government. The aim of the conference was to explain how the insurance industry responded to the floods of summer 2007 and to at look at ways of reducing flood risks in the future.

According to research carried out by the ABI in advance of the conference, 80% of those unfortunate enough to be involved in last summer’s floods are of the opinion that the situation is getting worse and, even taking the nation as a whole, that figure only drops to 67%. 75% of the people polled feel that not enough is being done to sort out the problem, and most of them (98%) see improved drainage as a top priority.

The next greatest cause for concern was the Government’s targets for new housing (3 million new homes by 2020), with the vast majority feeling that it would be appropriate to sacrifice the targets if the flood risk could be cut. 90% of respondents felt that new homes should not be built in areas of high flood risk unless rigorous defences were in place. The same percentage of people were in favour of a recognised standard, similar to the kite mark, which would prove to prospective buyers that the houses were built to a required standard of flood management.

The bill for last year’s floods is expected to reach £3 billion, so it is little wonder that the industry is concerned that many homes may end up uninsurable. Many insurance companies will now fix their prices at a level which reflects the risk, and even this may be dependent on the Government putting proper defences in place.