Student Home Insurance

It's ironic: students are more likely than most people to use the Internet, but the majority of online insurers won't offer student home insurance. Perhaps it's because they believe that you'll spend your uni years drinking snakebite, smoking drugs and causing chip pan fires.

Stereotypes aside, the reason why it's so hard to get student home insurance is twofold: most student accommodation tends to be rented, not owned outright, and students tend to stay in flats rather than cute little cottages in leafy avenues.

Insurers don't like rental properties and they don't like flats, and online insurers are even less keen: they "cherry pick", which means they offer great prices for low-risk people such as suburban pensioners and then either refuse to cover higher risks or charge premiums that are higher than the average post-grad's debt.

That doesn't mean you can't get insurance; it just means it's harder to find. For starters, you can forget about the big name insurers: they're not interested and if they do quote, even Bill Gates would balk at the price. Look instead for brokers such as 1st Quote, who deals with stacks of insurers and is happy to cover students. If that doesn't work then unfortunately you'll have to log off and get on the phone. Or ask your folks to pay for it.