Home Insurance - Square One Insurance

We all need insurance for different situations, car, house, property, structures, boats, ect. You want to protect your investment and hard earned money if an unfortunate event were to happen. For the most part, you pay for the comfort of your property to be protected and never will need this help. Insurance can be costly and the insurance companies will use many different excuses as to why your fees, rates and deductibles increase each year. 

I recently received my renewal papers for this year to start August 1st. My rate had increased at my current company, Johnson's Unifund (who I have been with for 10 years), from about ~$1200/year to about ~$1900. A $700 increase in one year while I have never had any claims. I called and discussed and the reason was I was no longer receiving a discount that I had gotten in the past as well as the rate of inflation in Ontario last year. Not sure what rate of inflation these guys are using but I also hope to get the same on my pay cheque. 

So began my search for a new home insurance provider. I checked many different sites directly and also used InsuaranceHotline.com, a service that will send your details to brokers to provide the best rate. Most of these quotes came in at about $800 - $1100, which is a nice decrease in price. So just as I was settled on one of these, I see a TV ad for Square One Insurance. 

From the first time visiting the site, setting up a quote as well as making a phone call to them, it was the easiest and most pleasant experience I ever had dealing with a company. I went through all the information about my house including current coverage's which included:

• $400,000 - Structure;
• $120,000 - Contents;
• $2,000,000 -Liability;
• $40,000 - Additional Living Expenses;
• + some additional coverage;

All of this being on par with all other quotes I receive but, the only difference, Square One was $64.01 a month, around $100 a month cheaper than Johnson's. 

So being the skeptic that I am, I done some further research into Square One and was pleasantly surprised by the reviews I found on the web, most five star ratings. Square One prides themselves on excellent customer service and quick turn around time on any call, email or online chat. So I guess they really redoing the insurance business from Square One. I have since purchase our home insurance from Square One and look forward to the same pleasant experience in the future. Unfortunately the only way to truly test an insurance company is if you need to file a claim, I hope to never need to figure this out, good or bad.

Check out the links to the left to see the reviews of Square One and Johnson's from InsurEye as well check out the Square One site. Now if they can only offer car insurance as well.

Since this was first written, we have had to use SquareOne for a water damage claim. They were fantastic to work with, everything went smoothly and done to our expectations. Additional, they just started this year to offer car insurance and I have moved our policies over to them.