Two buildings can stand in the same street with the same floor area – and their insurance picture will still differ fundamentally, because one is a prefab panel block and the other is a hundred-year-old brick house. Structure is one of the main factors in pricing, but there is more to it than that: different claims are typical, the way and cost of repair are different, and different questions have to be asked when quotes come in.
- The structure (the material of the walls, floors and roof) is one of the bases of risk classification – it influences the likelihood and the course of fire, water and storm damage alike.
- For prefab panel blocks the building systems and the long risers are the key question, for brick buildings the age and the standard of maintenance, and for mixed structures an individual survey.
- The structure has to be stated accurately in a quote request – data of the “brick, more or less” kind produces an inaccurate quote.
Why does the structure matter?
Through the insurer's eyes, the structure decides three questions. Combustibility: reinforced concrete and brick behave differently in a fire from a timber floor or a lightweight structure. Mode of damage: a storm treats a heavy tiled roof and a flat roof differently; water damage spreads differently along long, shared risers than through the short pipework of a small building. Repair cost: the same damage means different technology and a different price in each structure. Together these make up the risk classification – and one of the bases of the premium. On the other factors: what drives the premium.
Prefab panel: the home of system-wide risks
Structurally, a prefab panel building typically presents a favourable fire risk – reinforced concrete – but its typical claims burden comes from the building systems: long risers serving many flats, shared heating systems, lifts. A burst riser here is not the business of two flats but of ten. So for panel blocks the content of the water damage cover, the building-systems extensions and the state of refurbishment (has the riser replacement been done?) are the main questions. The panel-specific picture is set out in the article on prefab panel buildings.
Brick: the home of age and maintenance
The strength of classic brick buildings is their solid structure, and their risk is their age: timber floor sections, ageing pipework, ornate façades and external access balconies that demand constant maintenance. Here the insurance questions revolve around maintenance – the maintenance objection is the most frequent source of dispute in older buildings – and building liability takes on a prominent role: falling render above the pavement is an old-building classic. Details: the article on downtown brick buildings.
Mixed and unusual structures
Buildings of mixed construction – brick walls with timber floors, a later storey added in lightweight construction, partial refurbishments – are the most sensitive from the point of view of classification: the accuracy of the quote depends on how precisely we describe what is made of what. Guesswork is particularly expensive here: it is worth checking the structural data against the plans and the technical documentation. The list of data: the survey data list – the structure section there is not decoration, it is the condition of a good quote.
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