Finder’s home insurance methodology 2024

What are the Finder home insurance awards?

Finder's home insurance awards is a ratings methodology that compares both price and features across dozens of home and contents insurance policies. To determine the ratings, we researched 44 home and contents insurance policies. In total, we got 433 home insurance quotes based on several different home profiles.

We use the final scores from our insurance awards to inform the top picks on our best home insurance.

While we have gathered quotes for a broad range of different areas, your costs may differ a lot since prices vary significantly depending on the area you live in and the type of home you own. We did not include quotes for regional areas of the country. The ongoing weather events meant that several insurers were unable to provide cover at the time we gathered the quotes.

If you're looking to get cover and live in a regional area, it's worth calling the insurer directly to see if they will cover you.

What is the Finder rating?

The Finder rating is designed to make it easier for you to compare insurance policies side-by-side. It's based on the same information we gather as part of the Finder Awards. Each policy score is represented by a star rating.

To determine the ratings, our insurance experts and research team analyse policies based on price and features. The Finder ratings score you see on some of our tables and guides are based on a combination of price and features. Features account for 55% of the score, price accounts for 45%.

We also created separate scores for price and features to make it easier for you to weigh up what matters most to you. You can find these scores when you hover over the Finder rating. For example, Youi scored 5/5 for price and 4/5 for cover. It had a 4.5/5 Finder rating.

Finder's home insurance awards criteria

The criteria for Finder's home insurance awards was determined by our insights team and insurance experts. It must:

Home insurance eligibility criteria

• The home insurance provider must be in the market for at least 12 months
• Policies must be directly available to customers
• Cover must be offered to all ages
• The brand must have an online and accessible product disclosure statement
• The brand must have an online quoting engine or tool
• Cover must be available in major states (NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA)
• Combined home and contents insurance policies must be available
• The brand must offer some form of underinsurance protection, guarantee or safeguard
• The brand must offer flood cover (including optional)
• The brand must offer accidental damage (including optional)

Finder's home insurance awards methodology

1. How we calculated our price score for home insurance

To determine our home insurance award winners, we got prices across a total of 10 customer profiles. We got quotes for homes in regional and city areas in NSW, VIC, QLD, WA and SA.

2. How we calculated our final scores for home insurance

Our comprehensive weighting was a 70/30 split of features and price. The value score was a 40/60 split of features and price.

What are the Finder customer satisfaction awards?

The Finder customer satisfaction awards recognise Australia's favourite brands across a huge number of categories. We survey thousands of Australians to understand how they feel about their recent product purchases to help you make a decision about what product to get. It's an independent awards program calculated by our data and insights team. Commercial partnerships do not influence the results in any way.

In total, we gave out awards to 6 different home insurers:

• Customer satisfaction: NSW
• Customer satisfaction: VIC
• Customer satisfaction: QLD
• Customer satisfaction: SA
• Customer satisfaction: WA
• Customer satisfaction: National

1. Home insurance customer satisfaction awards criteria

• The recency period varied between 3 months and 3 years.
• We got a minimum of 35 responses for each home insurer for each of the 5 states we looked at (NT, TAS and ACT were not included because the sample size was too small).
• Respondents were asked whether they would recommend the home insurer to a friend. This result was scored out of 5 as a percentage. For example, if 80% of respondents said they would recommend a product, it received a score of 4 out of 5.
• Customers were also asked how they would rate each home insurer overall on a scale between 1 and 5 and in terms of:

1. Features and benefits
2. Customer service
3. Value for money

2. Home insurance customer satisfaction awards methodology

The overall score for NSW, QLD, WA, VIC and SA was calculated as an average of the metrics outlined above.

To determine the national winner, we calculated the average score from the top ranking brands from each of the 5 states we looked at.

To determine the insurer of the year winner, we calculated the average score of all top ranking insurance brands included in the customer satisfaction awards.

Our research in numbers

• Total number of responses for NSW: 1266
• Total number of responses for VIC: 1308
• Total number of responses for QLD: 1275
• Total number of responses for WA: 1222
• Total number of responses for SA: 1045

What are the Finder Green Awards?

The Finder Green Awards aim to identify sustainability leaders across some of our main comparison categories including banking, insurance, superannuation, utilities and travel. We highlight the winners on our review pages and comparison tables to make it easier for you to compare policies and know that you're purchasing a policy with a more sustainable brand.

Finder's Green Insurer of the Year methodology

We use a dynamic scoring system to decide the winner in each of the industry categories of the Finder Green Awards. Rather than awarding a set number of points for certain values, Finder's dynamic scoring system awards points relative to the other submissions by adjusting scores based on the actual range of submitted values for each category. These sources will then be adjusted to reflect the weightings shown as percentages in the tables below:

Eligibility criteria: Company must have offered insurance products to consumers in Australia in the 12 months prior to 31 December 2021.

What are the Finder Innovation Awards?

The Finder Innovation Awards acknowledge excellence and creativity while recognising the impact of innovation across a range of industries. There are 21 innovation award categories including best insurance innovation and best insurtech.

Both categories were judged by a panel of internal and external experts including founder of Determined Consumer Chris Zinn and Managing editor of Insurance News John Deex. Each judge scored the brand out of 100. The finalists were chosen based on who had the highest average score.

Frequently asked questions

• How often are policies reviewed for the Finder awards?

  We currently run our Finder home insurance awards once a year. The 2024 awards are based on policies that were available to take out during the 2023 period.

• Do we rate all products available in the market?

  We endeavour to assess the majority of products in the market but this isn't always possible and it may be that not every product or brand in the market was included for judging.

• Why aren't some insurers included in the final results?

  Sometimes we aren't able to include an insurer in our final results because we were unable to get enough quotes from them or they did not meet our eligibility criteria.

Written by

Gary Ross Hunter

Journalist

Gary Ross Hunter has over 6 years of expertise writing about insurance, including life, health, home, and car insurance. Having reviewed hundreds of product disclosure statements and published over 800 articles, he loves simplifying complex insurance topics for everyday readers. Gary has contributed to major outlets like Yahoo Finance, The Sydney Morning Herald, and news.com.au, and holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English Literature from the University of Glasgow, along with a Tier 2 General Advice certification, ensuring his work adheres to ASIC’s RG146 standards. See full bio

Gary Ross's expertise

Gary Ross has written 618 Finder guides across topics including:

• Health, home, life, car, pet and travel insurance
• Managing the cost of living