To Bank Fodder, I am not friends with the broker. They told me they no longer work with the old insurance companies. The notice of renewal only contained a summary of cover not the full policy documents. Only after my asking for the full policy have I discovered the exclusions, but the switch has already happened.
Uncle BG, the old policy says I should notify them as soon as possible if something happens but does not set a date. I did not report anything at the time because there was no claim or action required.
It is really hard to know when or what to report. If you report trivial things all the time, it will just build up a claims history when there has been no loss but you will be covered if a related thing causes a loss later. That is, unless you switch to a new insurer who will exclude anything that is related to something earlier.
The thing I was bothered about was a few months back but stopped before anything bad happened. However, it might start again so I want to be covered in case a claim results.
If I can find a new policy without a lead in period and the problem starts again, will I be covered?
If they say there was a previous problem even though it had stopped months before the new policy, they might not cover me so would the old policy cover it?
I don't think it will.
The renewal letter did not include the policy wording, only a key facts statement and did not list the exclusions, so even if I had dealt with it before the renewal I only found out about the exclusion after the old policy ended and the new one started.
I will call the broker an try to insist they replace the policy with one equivalent to the old one but it sounded like they did not have any alternatives.
I don't know how brokers work but I thought they were supposed to be able to pick from many insurance companies?
Thanks for the informative reply.