Martyn Barrett, Director at Barrett Corp Harrington, gives us a run down of his fact-based predictions for the BCH team in 2020.
We love this month’s topic of ‘Predictions for 2020’ but, in all honesty, we’re not big advocates for predicting things. To predict is to forecast- a potentially educated guess with no real certainty. We prefer facts. Why guesstimate the sum insured for a block of flats, when you can bring in the specialists who can give you an accurate sum insured?
That said, we are happy to predict that booking Reinstatement Cost Assessments (RCAs) and communicating changes to sums insured is not likely to be the highlight of a Property Manager’s 2020, or possibly even working week!
But RCAs do constitute the starting point for all buildings insurance policies and are the basis for setting premiums.
Setting the right sum insured is contractual, and is therefore pretty pivotal in arranging insurance.
If it is wrongly set, one thing we can predict is that, when it comes to a claim, life is not going to be made any easier.
At best, the claim will be reduced and at worst, there may not be enough to cover the cost of rebuilding a severely damaged block.
An unexpected acheivement…
At BCH, we are the market leader in calculating the rebuilding costs of block of flats. Now, that is something that we could not have predicted when the company began over 13 years ago.
With varied opinions on market values making mainstream media headlines, we have no predictions about what will happen in 2020 and beyond.
That is more about supply and demand and, dare we mention, the ‘Brexit’ factor and general economic confidence?
One thing that is predictable is that rebuilding costs carry on, gently increasing, year on year and the need to review the rebuilding cost of your block is constant. Our colleagues at the RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) recommend checking annually with a ‘major review’ every third year.
The dreaded block fires
There have been some pretty devastating fires in blocks of flats in 2019 and it is predictable that there will be more in 2020.
So, as we work in the specialist area of RCAs, we predict we will be busier in 2020 than in 2019.
We’ll continue to offer flat owners the ‘peace of mind’ that, if that unpredictable major loss occurs, there will certainly be enough insurance cover to pay out.
Ready for 2020
This year at BCH we have strengthened our team; with the appointment of new directors and surveyors which, along with investment in new IT, makes us ready for increases in workload- that is, assuming our predictions are correct!!
