Saga Landlord Insurance Review

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Saga has been selling to people over 50 since 1951, and insurance has been the steady half of the business for most of that time. The group finished its financial year on 31 January 2026 with 1,294,000 insurance policies on the books, a customer database of 9.3 million people and underlying revenue of £654.6m, up 11% on the year before. Landlord cover is a small corner of that, but it is a well-built one: buildings protection up to £1,000,000, contents up to £35,000, property owners liability of £2,000,000, and a product that has held a Defaqto 5 Star rating every year since 2015.

The policy you buy from Saga today is arranged and run by Uinsure Limited, a Manchester firm Saga partnered with on 1 October 2024. Saga puts its name and its over-50s audience to the product; Uinsure sets the price, picks the insurer from its panel and handles the claim. That is worth knowing before you ring, because it decides which phone number you need and whose complaints department you would be writing to.

One date in October split this policy in two

Saga landlord policies sold on or before 30 September 2024 were underwritten by Royal & Sun Alliance Insurance plc, company number 93792, on a Saga-branded wording. Everything sold from 1 October 2024 comes through Uinsure Limited instead — company number 06046870, registered at the XYZ Building, Hardman Boulevard, Manchester M3 3AQ, and authorised by the FCA under firm reference 463689, a number you can check yourself on the Financial Services Register.

Saga keeps both routes open and staffs them separately. An older RSA-era policy is serviced on 0800 027 1355 from 9am to 5.30pm on weekdays, with a claims line on 0800 027 1357 that runs around the clock. A policy bought since the changeover goes to Uinsure on 0344 844 3844, weekdays 9am to 5pm, and the Saga-badged sales team at Uinsure answers 0161 524 3051 from 8.30am to 7pm on weekdays and 9am to 3pm on Saturdays. Ring the wrong one and you will be transferred rather than helped.

The split matters for a second reason. Saga sold its own underwriter, Acromas Insurance Company Limited, to Ageas for £65m plus £2.5m on completion, and signed a 20-year partnership worth £80m upfront and up to £30m in contingent payments. Motor went live under that arrangement in December 2025 and home followed on 23 April 2026. Landlord did not go to Ageas. It went to Uinsure seven months before the Ageas deal was even announced, and it sits outside the partnership that now defines the rest of Saga's insurance business.

What the £1m headline actually buys

The buildings limit is £1,000,000, or the rebuild cost if the property is a flat. Underneath it sit the sub-limits that decide most real claims. Trace and access — the cost of pulling up a floor to find a leak — is covered to £10,000, which is generous; a great many landlord policies stop at £5,000. Replacing locks after keys are lost or stolen is covered to £1,000. Metered water and oil lost through an escape is covered to £1,500. Theft from outbuildings, on the contents section, is limited to £1,000.

Liability is where the numbers get large. Property owners liability runs to £2,000,000 and liability to a domestic employee — a cleaner or a gardener you pay — to £5,000,000. Both are the market standard rather than a selling point, but a landlord without the second one is exposed in a way that is easy to overlook.

Loss of rent and the cost of rehousing a tenant are treated as one pot, capped at 20% of the buildings claim limit. On a £250,000 rebuild figure that is £50,000, which is ample. Buy contents cover on its own and the equivalent pot is £3,000 at the £15,000 contents level or £7,000 at £35,000 — a much tighter number, and the one that applies if you let a flat where the freeholder insures the structure.

Set those against what the market is actually paying out. The ABI's property tracker put £846m of home claims settled in the first quarter of 2026, an average claim of £6,340 against an average combined premium of £375, and by the second quarter the average subsidence claim had reached a record £20,000. A £10,000 trace and access limit stops looking like small print at that point.

The optional covers are where the conditions live

Legal expenses and rent guarantee are provided through Arc Legal Assistance Limited, FCA firm reference 305958, and they are the parts of the policy most likely to be bought and least likely to be read. Legal cover runs to £100,000 with unlimited access to the advice line, extends to £1,000,000 for a Defective Premises Act claim, and pays £20,000 if a tax liability falls due on accidental death. A tax dispute carries a £200 excess.

Rent guarantee pays £2,500 a month for a maximum of twelve months. The excess is one month's rent, arrears below £250 are outside the cover, and Arc will not run a case it rates at less than a 51% chance of winning. It also requires the tenant referencing paperwork to exist — a claim without it is declined on the file rather than on the merits.

That condition has become sharper since 1 May 2026, when the Renters' Rights Act 2025 converted most existing assured shorthold tenancies into assured periodic tenancies and removed Section 21 altogether. Possession now runs through Section 8 grounds, which takes longer, and a Section 8 notice served since commencement stays live for twelve months rather than the six a Section 21 notice used to give. Landlords also had to issue tenants an information sheet by 31 May 2026, with penalties reaching £7,000 for not doing it. Twelve months of rent guarantee is a different proposition when possession itself has slowed down.

Home emergency is the third add-on: £1,000 including VAT per claim, with no cap on the number of claims in a year. It carries a 48-hour waiting period from inception unless you held equivalent cover immediately before, and you must report a problem within 48 hours of noticing it.

Fees, excesses and the things the quote does not show you

Uinsure's own terms of business document, in its September 2025 version, sets an annual administration fee of £48 on landlord insurance and £36 on home insurance, on top of the premium and the insurer's commission. Instalment charges are levied separately by Close Brothers. None of that appears on Saga's landlord pages, so treat £48 as the figure to look for on the quote summary and confirm it before you pay.

Excesses are harder to pin down, because the wording defers all of them to the schedule you are shown at quote. There is no published standard excess, no published escape of water excess and no published subsidence excess anywhere in the customer-facing documents — and subsidence is the one that hurts, given the £20,000 average claim now being recorded. You cannot compare this policy on excess until you have run a quote, which is a real obstacle to shopping around and needs confirming case by case.

The security condition is published, and it has teeth. Uinsure's landlord wording requires the final exit door and any other external, sliding, patio or double-leaf french doors to carry a five-lever mortise deadlock conforming to BS3621, a rim automatic deadlock or a multi-point locking system. An older let with original door furniture may not meet that, and the time to find out is before a theft claim rather than after one.

One more piece of housekeeping. The FCA has a standing warning about a clone firm using the Saga Services name, first published on 17 August 2020 and last updated on 29 March 2021, which was operating on 0208 002 8791. The genuine firm is Saga Services Limited, FRN 311557, at 3 Pancras Square, London N1C 4AG. If a Saga landlord quote arrives from a number you did not dial, check it against the Register before sending money.

Sixty empty days, and the sixty-first

Cover under several sections falls away once the property has been unoccupied for more than 60 consecutive days. That is a fairly standard allowance and slightly better than the 30 days some landlord wordings impose, but the count is of consecutive days with nobody living there, not days between tenancies on paper. A void running from a tenant leaving in early July to a new one moving in mid-September crosses it.

Optional malicious damage cover is the add-on landlords most often want, and it is also the one the unoccupancy rule bites hardest. Damage by a tenant, their staff or their guests is excluded from the standard policy unless the extension is bought, and drug cultivation damage sits behind the same extension. Neither responds while the property is over the 60-day line.

Saga's own home book gives some sense of how the market has moved. Home policies in force fell 19% over the year to 31 January 2026, from 506,000 to 412,000, while motor rose 12% to 675,000 — the shape of a business that has been repricing property risk hard. The Financial Ombudsman Service, in the annual figures it published on 21 May 2026, logged 6,399 new buildings insurance complaints against 214,600 across all products, with an average uphold rate of 30%. Property claims are argued about more than most, and the wording is where those arguments get settled.

Figures were taken from each provider's own published terms on 30 August 2026. Variable rates can change at any time — confirm the current rate with the provider before applying.