Reviewing your insurance — Patter

The case

Most insurance gets set up once and then silently renews every year while life changes around it. The car policy taken out when you were renting gets renewed automatically now that you own a house. The life insurance arranged before you had children still names an ex-partner as beneficiary. The contents insurance hasn’t been updated since you bought the television that now sits in your living room.

None of this is negligence. Insurance is designed to be invisible when everything is fine, which means it’s also easy to forget about until something goes wrong. The problem isn’t that people don’t care about being covered — it’s that the task of checking has no natural trigger. The renewal notice arrives, the direct debit goes out, and another year passes.

Running this routine in Patter gives the task a shape it doesn’t naturally have. You start with what you’ve got, work through whether it still fits, check the prices, and make the changes before the next renewal rather than after. The step that most people skip — checking beneficiaries, identifying gaps, thinking about what changed — gets done because it’s in the sequence, not because something prompted it.

The goal isn’t the cheapest insurance. It’s the right coverage at a fair price, with no gaps and no outdated details. That’s a different task from what most people do when they think about reviewing their insurance, which is usually just checking whether they can pay less for the same thing.

Reviewing Your Insurance

List every insurance policy you currently hold. Home, contents, car, life, health, travel, income protection, pet, anything. If you're not sure, check your email for renewal notices, your bank statements for direct debits, and any physical folders where you keep documents. Don't move on until the list is complete.
For each policy, note the key details. Provider, annual premium, coverage amount, renewal date, and any excess. You don't need to read the full documents — just enough to know what you're paying for what.
Check when each policy renews. If any are renewing within the next 30 days, those need attention first. Note the dates somewhere you'll see them — a calendar reminder set 6 weeks before renewal gives you enough time to compare and switch if needed.
Think about what's changed in the past year. New property, renovations, a new car, a new baby, a change in income, a relationship change, a bereavement, a new business. Any of these can make existing coverage inadequate or existing policies irrelevant. Note anything that applies.
Check your home and contents coverage reflects your actual situation. Is the rebuild value on your home insurance current? Have you made significant purchases that should be added to contents? Is anything valuable enough to need separate listing? Underinsurance is far more common than overinsurance.
Check your life insurance beneficiaries are still correct. This is the step most people have never done since they set the policy up. Marriage, divorce, new children, a bereavement — any of these may mean the named beneficiary is wrong. Contact your provider if anything needs updating.
Check your income protection and health coverage still matches your situation. A job change, a move to self-employment, or a change in employer benefits can leave gaps. If your employer provides health or income cover, check what it actually includes rather than assuming.
Identify any coverage gaps. Is there a risk in your life that isn't covered? A new business venture, a valuable instrument, a home office, a gap between sick pay and income protection kicking in. This is the question most people don't ask until they're making a claim.
Compare your existing policies against current alternatives. Use a comparison site for commoditised policies like car and home. For more complex coverage like life or income protection, a broker is usually worth it. Compare like for like — check the excess, the exclusions, and the coverage limits, not just the headline price.
Contact your current providers before switching. Loyalty rarely pays in insurance, but it's worth calling to ask for a better rate before you leave. Providers will often match or beat competitor quotes rather than lose a customer.
Make any changes. Switch providers, update coverage amounts, add or remove policies, update beneficiaries. Do it now — decisions made but not acted on tend not to happen.
Set renewal reminders for every policy. Six weeks before each renewal date. Far enough ahead to compare and switch, close enough to be relevant.
Note one thing that would make next year's review easier. A document you had to hunt for, a policy you couldn't find the details of, a question you had to look up. Write it somewhere you'll find it.

Make it yours

The audit at steps #1 and #2 is the part most people have never done. Most people know roughly what insurance they have. Very few could tell you the coverage amounts, excess levels, or renewal dates for each policy without looking. That information is the foundation for everything else in this routine — without it, you're comparing prices rather than coverage.

Step #4 is the one that changes what the whole review looks like. A year in which nothing changed is a quick check. A year with a new property, a new baby, or a significant purchase requires a more thorough look. If several things have changed, consider working through each policy separately rather than doing a bulk review.

The beneficiary check at step #6 is the most neglected step in insurance. It takes five minutes and it matters enormously. The consequences of getting it wrong only become visible at the worst possible moment.

The gap question at step #8 is the one worth sitting with. Most insurance reviews are about whether you're paying the right price for what you have. The more important question is whether what you have is actually right. A policy you never claim on is not necessarily a policy you don't need.