Ethical Home Insurance

Ethical home insurance companies

With more frequent extreme weather events like floods, home insurance claims are rising. But are insurance providers themselves contributing to climate change?

With 8 of the 18 brands scoring under 10 (out of 100), and a few recommended brands and one Best Buy in the guide, there are clear differences between the least and most ethical home insurance providers. 

Many of the companies we reviewed clump together in the middle of our score table, with ratings from 20-50. 

Read on to find out where the well-known home insurance providers, such as Admiral, Aviva, Direct Line, along with others including Ageas, AXA, Ecclesiastical, esure, Hastings, LV=, MORE THAN, and NFU Mutual, score according to our ethical ratings.

Buying ethical home insurance

An important but underrated way of shaping the world is by choosing an ethical insurance provider.

Home insurance matters to us because if our house floods, it means we can cover the costs of repairs or replacement. But what are the ethical issues? Apart from giving us peace of mind, what impacts are our insurance choices having on the world?

As well as insuring us and our stuff, insurance companies insure businesses against all sorts of losses. They spread the risk of any venture and, in doing so, keep capitalism chugging along.

While many insurance companies stick to providing insurance for individuals or small and medium-sized businesses, the largest ones insure very big companies whose activities can have harmful impacts on the world, such as the development of new fossil fuel projects. They are therefore playing an essential role in the continuation of such activities.

Insurance companies are also investors. They invest our premiums (the amount paid for a contract of insurance) in the economy and those investments can end up in sectors and companies that have negative social and environmental impacts.

So, when you’re buying a home insurance policy, you’re not only covering yourself in case of misfortune, you’re also making a choice about the overall ethical direction of the economy.

What's the difference between underwriters and brokers?

When buying insurance, most people do so from a broker or comparison site. 

In this guide, however, we rate underwriters. These are the companies that assess and assume the risk of an insurance policy and pay out in the event of a claim. They are the ones that invest our premiums and provide insurance for companies. It therefore makes sense to rate their policies and practices.

A lot of banks provide insurance but most of them aren’t underwriters. The exception is Lloyds which underwrites its own home insurance policies and those of its Halifax brand. Aviva provides home insurance for HSBC, First Direct, and Santander. NatWest’s home insurance is provided by UKI Limited which is part of Direct Line Group.

We have not included brokers in the score table. This is because brokers research and recommend policies from a range of underwriters, but they don’t actually assume the risk of an insurance policy. So it would be difficult to provide a single rating for such companies. If buying from a broker, you can normally see the list of underwriters they use on their website and any policy document should tell you who the underwriter is. You can also tell your broker if there are any underwriters you don’t want to buy from. 

Although we have not rated them in the guide, we have included information on some ethical insurance brokers, and a bespoke ranking of the specialist green and charity broker Naturesave. 

We have also provided background information on some of the bigger comparison websites which are used for home insurance quotes.

Are home insurance companies funding fossil fuels?

While most insurance companies now have some kind of ethical investment policy, it’s less common for them to have a policy on the kinds of business they underwrite. Neither do they disclose their insurance clients so it’s difficult to know what kinds of sectors they’re involved in. 

For most companies in this guide, it’s probably less important as their business is providing insurance to individuals and, in some cases, to small and medium-sized companies. But the big three, Allianz, Aviva, and AXA also provide insurance to big businesses including fossil fuel companies and all of them now have policies to exclude, at least to some extent, the insurance of new fossil fuel projects.

• Allianz excludes single-site standalone insurance for new projects such as thermal coal mines or exploration and development of new oil and gas fields. It also excludes companies planning new coal projects such as plants and mines. It does not have a similar restriction for companies planning new oil and gas projects.
• Aviva states in its ESG Baseline Underwriting statement that it will not offer insurance for the “development of new or expansion of existing coal mines, oil or gas fields.”
• AXA states that it won’t provide new insurance policies to companies planning to develop new thermal coal mines, new thermal coal-fired power capacity, and coal transporters or traders developing new coal assets. It has some exclusions for oil and gas but these are less comprehensive.

These policies are to be welcomed but the summaries above don’t reflect their nuance and the companies have allowed themselves scope to deviate. 

For example, Aviva states that as an exception to its exclusion policy it will consider companies “serious about their transition out of high carbon fuels through a credible transition plan and approved Science Based Target (SBTi) or an equivalent target validation that aligns with the goals of the Paris agreement.” Allianz’s policy allows it to underwrite the development of new gas fields if a government decides it is necessary for “energy security emergency reasons”.

These exceptions may be reasonable if carefully and sparingly applied. But without transparency about who the companies are insuring it’s very difficult to hold them to account for compliance with their own policies. We’d therefore like to see companies remove the loopholes or publish information about companies and projects they have underwritten as a result of using these exceptions.

What are home insurance underwriters investing in?

Our investment policy rating rewarded companies for having policies which restricted the types of companies they invested in. 

We looked for exclusions on:

• fossil fuels
• arms
• factory farming
• companies involved in human rights and workers’ rights abuses. 

We looked at companies’ company-wide exclusion policies. Some companies have ethical policies covering certain parts of their businesses, for example those which have investment funds available to the public often have a sub-set of ethical funds with more extensive and detailed restrictions. However, these don’t cover how your insurance premiums are invested so we didn’t take them into account for this guide.

Ageas and Ecclesiastical came top, both scoring 60 (out of 100) for this category. They both had detailed policies covering all investments and these excluded all arms, both conventional and controversial. This is unusual in the investment sector as most companies only exclude controversial weapons such as cluster munitions which are regulated by international law. They both also excluded companies which did not meet the standards of the UN Global Compact (which contains criteria on workers' rights and human rights) and Ecclesiastical also had an exclusion on companies operating in oppressive regimes.

Aviva and its brand Quotemehappy scored 40 as Aviva’s policy also referred to the UN Global Compact. However, given the company’s financing of companies supplying arms to Israel, there must be some doubt about the strength of its human rights commitment.

The esure group (including Sheila’s Wheels) scored 0. While it stated it had a responsible investment policy, this did not appear to be publicly available so we couldn’t check its exclusions. 

Lloyds and its brand Halifax also scored 0 as Lloyds’ policies on investments explicitly excluded the investments of its insurance business.

No insurance companies had policies that excluded investments in companies linked to factory farming.

Home insurance companies and Israel

AXA has been the subject of a boycott since 2016. 

The “Stop AXA Assistance to Israeli Apartheid Campaign” targeted the company because of its investments in Israeli banks, Elbit Systems (a leading Israeli arms manufacture), and other companies associated with Israeli settlements.

The campaign has had significant successes: AXA divested fully from Elbit Systems in 2019 and from Israeli banks in 2024. The boycott remains in place, however, as recent research showed that in June 2024 the company held at least $150m of investments in eleven weapons manufacturers linked to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

A recent report by Boycott Bloody Insurance also identified AXA as an investor in 13 companies involved in the supply of arms to Israel.

Allianz and Aviva, while not subject to a boycott, also hold investments in weapons manufacturers supplying Israel. According to the Boycott Bloody Insurance report, in February 2025, Allianz held over $450m worth of investments in 15 companies supplying the Israeli military, and the amount of its investment nearly doubled during the course of 2024. The report also identified Allianz as providing insurance to Elbit Systems.

Aviva was not identified as insuring any arms companies but it had by far the largest investments in them, holding over $880m in February 2025. The report concluded that the three companies could be “considered substantially complicit in fuelling the assault on Palestinians”.

Pay inequality in insurance

The finance industry in the United Kingdom has been known to be the worst performing in terms of pay between full-time male and female employees. 

Our article on the finance sector and the pay gap has more detail.

Solar panels insurance

If you have installed solar panels, what should you do with them when it comes to your home insurance?

Solar panels will increase your home’s rebuild value and as they aren’t cheap it is sensible to add them to your home insurance.

They will be covered under buildings insurance and most policies these days include solar panels as standard. They should be covered for damage from bad weather, fire, falling trees and subsidence, as well as theft and vandalism. But it is always best to double-check with your provider exactly what’s included, as policies can vary.

Tax conduct of home insurance companies

Insurance turned out to be a low-scoring sector for tax conduct with the majority of companies scoring 0 (out of 100) for this rating category. 

The only companies to have no presence in tax havens and score 100 were Direct Line (which includes Churchill) and Ecclesiastical.

Aviva scored 0 for tax which means that if its takeover of Direct Line goes ahead, Direct Line will also score 0. 

NFU Mutual scored 70 as it did have subsidiaries in tax havens, however it had a clear statement that it didn’t use them for tax avoidance purposes. 

Admiral had one subsidiary in a tax haven and we found no explanation of its presence there or statement that it didn’t engage in tax avoidance. 

Changes in ownership of home insurance providers

There have been several recent acquisitions in the insurance industry which means that the ownership of some brands has changed.

The Churchill and Direct Line insurance brands are currently both owned by Direct Line Group. But at the end of 2024, rival insurer Aviva agreed to acquire Direct Line. The deal is not yet complete at the time of writing and is still subject to regulatory approval so we’ve rated the two companies separately.

The same is true of esure, and its Sheila’s Wheels brand. They are currently owned by Bain Capital but are due to be acquired by Ageas. The deal was agreed in April 2025 and as it’s not clear yet when it will be completed, we have rated the companies separately.

Ageas has been busy as it’s also struck a deal with Saga to provide its home and motor insurance products. We previously included Saga in our insurance guides as it owned its own underwriting business but it no longer does. So, if you’re interested in a Saga policy, see Ageas’ rating.

MORE THAN was previously owned by Intact Financial Corporation but was bought in 2023 by the Admiral group.

Who owns which brands

If you shop around and get quotes from different providers, you may actually still be using brands from the same overall company. This guide includes the following insurance groups:

• Admiral: Admiral, MORE THAN
• Allianz: Allianz, LV=
• Aviva: Aviva, Quotemehappy
• Axa Group: Axa, Swiftcover
• Bain Capital: esure, Sheila's Wheels
• Direct Line: Churchill and Direct Line
• Lloyds Group: Halifax, Lloyds

Ethical insurance brokers

Although this home insurance guide lists the main insurance underwriters which dominate the market globally, few of us will approach them directly to buy our car insurance. 

More than 90% of people now use price comparison websites to buy home and car insurance. And more than 80% of businesses use brokers for commercial insurance. 

Brokers are also sometimes useful for consumers if we're insuring something out of the ordinary or hard to understand.

Not many brokers and comparison websites talk the language of ethical choices and many will provide quotes from the biggest and lowest-scoring underwriters. However, all of them are used to providing consumers with a variety of quotes to choose from and below we explore a few with some ethical credentials.

Ethical consumers should check the underwriters against our score table for the quotes offered, and then make an informed choice based on their own priorities. For example, the broker may offer you a quote and policy from AXA, but you have chosen to avoid AXA. It may be worth asking them to search again, give them names of underwriters you'd like to avoid, or try a different broker, if the options provided aren't great.

Green or ethical insurance brokers

We profile a small selection of green or ethical car insurance brokers. 

Remember to check who the actual underwriter is, of any policy you are offered, if you want to avoid specific companies. (See note above.) 

1) Evergreen

Evergreen Insurance Services offers home, travel, car, and business insurance. It donates some of its commission revenue to animal and wildlife charities including the Vegan and Vegetarian societies.

2) Sustain Insurance Brokers

Sustain is another business insurance specialist, this time with both B Corp and Living Wage certifications.

3) WRS

WRS is another part of the Benefact group (see below) specialising in business insurance for social enterprises, churches, and charities. 

Price comparison websites

The are four main price comparison websites in the UK. We haven't done a full ethical review of them at this stage, so the sketches below are just for readers to get a sense of who they are dealing with.

Although none of them really talk about ethics, perhaps the most straightforward of all the businesses, and our favourites at this stage, are Money Supermarket and Go.Compare.

1) Compare the Market

The biggest of the four comparison sites by sales, it is part of a global group offering insurance services including brokers in South Africa, Singapore, and China.

Disappointingly its parent company, BGL Holdings, is located in the tax haven Guernsey.

2) Confused.com

Definitely the company group with the most confusing corporate structure! Its ultimate parent, with the catchy title Zephyr Midco 1 Ltd, is based in London. But with another holding company in the group based in Grand Cayman, its likely approach to tax doesn't fill us with confidence.

3) Go.Compare

Go.Compare is a bit of an outlier here in that it is owned by the large global magazine publisher Future plc. It has well-known brands in its portfolio of over 200 titles including Woman’s Own and Marie Claire.

4) Money Supermarket

A smaller specialist company based in North Wales, MONY group also owns MoneySavingExpert and travelsupermarket.com

Additional research by Rob Harrison.