【Home Insurance Comparison 2025】Which home insurance is best? Complete guide for homeowners and tenants (with exclusive actuary ratings)

Incidents such as water leaks in a unit, power outages, and household appliances overheating and catching fire occur frequently; at best they cause property damage, and at worst they involve legal liability and serious injury or loss of life. To give yourself and your family peace of mind, a comprehensive home insurance policy not only protects against property loss, but also provides compensation to the insured in the event that an accident causes bodily injury or legal liability. Which home insurance is best? What do they cover? 10Life compares the coverage and premiums of home insurance plans on the market and scores them according to different property uses (owner-occupied / landlord renting out / tenant) to make it easy for readers to compare.

Home insurance primarily covers damage to household property, third‑party legal liability, and personal accidents in the home. Policyholders should pay attention to whether the causes of these losses are covered, as that is the key to making a claim.

Tenants or owners may purchase home insurance as needed, but their protection requirements can differ. If the property is owner-occupied, both contents and liability coverage in a home insurance policy are equally important for protecting the household; however, when the owner leases the property, if most of the contents in the property do not belong to the owner, the importance of contents coverage is reduced and there is relatively more emphasis on liability coverage. Therefore, in response to different property uses (owner-occupied, tenant-occupied, and rented out by the owner), 10Life actuaries have developed different scoring weightings to help applicants find the home insurance products that better meet their needs and clearly understand which home insurance is better.

For owner-occupiers or tenants, the highest-rated products come from Zurich, scoring 9.6 in the owner-occupier category and a perfect 10 in the tenant category, while Dah Sing Insurance's product achieved the highest score in the landlord (owner renting out) category with 9.9.

Many people mistakenly believe that higher premiums mean more comprehensive coverage. However, according to 10Life's analysis, a product's quality is not directly related to how high the premium is. As can be seen from the table above, many products that received high ratings from 10Life are not among the most expensive.

Besides the overall score, you should also pay attention to the coverage of individual items. Some products have overall scores above 9 points but score zero in certain items; others may not have an outstanding overall score yet receive full marks for specific coverages.

Take HSBC Home Superior Comprehensive Protection Plan B as an example: for owner-occupied properties (see Table 3), home coverage and legal liability both scored above 9 points, but it received zero points for personal accident coverage. Ultimately, the overall score can only serve as an initial reference — readers should choose a product that best fits their own needs when purchasing home insurance.

Although home insurance covers household belongings, including furniture, appliances, valuables and interior renovations, consumers should pay attention to the total sum insured and the per-item coverage limit when choosing a plan. Queensland and Prudential’s top-tier plans offer the highest total coverage, both reaching 1.5 million, while Queensland’s per-item limit is 100,000 and Prudential’s is divided by item category.

In addition, many home insurance policies have deductibles and exclusions. For common flooding and leakage incidents, the insured can first file a claim and submit repair quotations to the insurer, then pay the repair costs upfront and receive compensation after the deductible is applied; the deductible also varies depending on the unit’s floor level and the building’s age.

Home insurance liability protection is not limited to personal liability; it also covers seven categories of liability: employers, pet owners, tenants, occupiers, property owners, domestic helpers and independent contractors.

Liability refers to the insurer bearing compensation and legal costs arising from negligence that causes injury, death or property damage to third parties. For example, if a domestic helper carelessly causes an aluminum window to fall from a height and injure a passerby, and the policy's liability coverage category includes domestic helpers, the insured can still transfer part of the related compensation liability and legal costs to the insurer.

Although home insurance provides coverage for personal injury and death resulting from household accidents — common examples include young children or elderly people suffering falls or bumps — this is not the main selling point of home insurance, and some products offer very limited related coverage. Consumers should pay attention to the personal accident compensation amounts offered by a product, whether it covers different types of injury and death such as death, blindness and paralysis, and which causes of injury are covered.

Home insurance covers many items, so readers should compare several products before buying and choose one that suits their personal needs. Also, many people confuse home insurance with fire insurance, in fact, fire insurance primarily covers the building structure and its scope of coverage is not the same as that of home insurance.

Many people confuse fire insurance with home insurance. In fact, the former mainly covers the building structure, while the latter mainly covers household belongings; their scopes of coverage are not identical. For details, please refer to Table 2.

Before carrying out home renovations, does the policyholder need to notify the insurance company? What are the consequences of not notifying?

Most home insurance policies require policyholders to notify the insurer of impending major renovation works. Generally, minor decorative work (such as painting or replacing furniture) does not require special notification, but larger renovations involving plumbing/electrical work, wall removal, structural changes, etc., should be reported to the insurer in advance.

Possible consequences of not notifying:

• Policy terms may include a "change of risk" clause; if you fail to notify the insurer of major renovations, the insurer may refuse to pay claims when a loss occurs
• Risks clearly increase during renovations (e.g., higher risk of fire or flooding), and failure to notify may be treated as concealing material information
• In severe cases, the insurer may have the right to cancel the policy or refuse to pay future claims on the grounds of breach of the duty of good faith 

Does home insurance cover structural problems caused by renovation works? For example, losses resulting from mistakenly removing a load-bearing wall?

Home insurance mainly covers loss of household contents (such as furniture, appliances, valuables) and third-party liability, and does not cover damage to the building's structure (such as walls, floors, ceilings). Even if a structural issue leads to sudden property loss (for example, removing a load-bearing wall causing the ceiling to collapse and crush furniture), if the works themselves are illegal alterations, the insurer has the right to deny the claim. 

Even if the policyholder has purchased building structure insurance (fire insurance), the policy covers the original building structure (such as walls and ceilings), but the terms clearly require:

• All structural alterations must comply with the Buildings Ordinance
• Prior approval from the Buildings Department and completion of the approval procedures are required 
  Common situations where claims are denied include: removing a load-bearing wall without approval, illegally converting to an open kitchen, adding a staircase, etc. The 2024 LOHAS Park load-bearing wall removal incident is a typical example; such illegal works will directly invalidate the fire insurance policy.
• Compliance with the Fire Services Department, the Labour Department, the Dangerous Goods Ordinance, the Factories and Industrial Undertakings Ordinance and other regulations, ordinances and any notices published by relevant government authorities. Failure to comply may affect or increase the risks covered by the policy. 

To learn more about home insurance products, compare over 35 home insurance plans on the market now to see which is best; see what each home insurance policy covers and the premiums at a glance, with dedicated actuary ratings.

Note: This article was last updated on May 16, 2025.

This English version of this article has been generated by machine translation powered by AI. It is provided solely for reference purposes. In the event of any discrepancy or inconsistency between this translation and the original Chinese version, the Chinese version shall prevail.