Home insurance premiums fell 9% across Great Britain in 2025, with London recording the largest decline at 11%. Northern Ireland fell 5% - the smallest regional decline in the UK - and even the cheapest Northern Ireland district now carries a higher premium than any region in Great Britain. When a market fails to participate in a broad-based pricing decline, the explanation is structural rather than cyclical. Three structural factors are keeping Northern Ireland premiums elevated in ways that the same market forces bringing Great Britain premiums down are not addressing.
The first is flood risk concentration. Northern Ireland's average premium fell from £504 to £479, according to CompareNI.com research, but within that average the most expensive district moved in the opposite direction. Newry, Mourne and Down saw premiums rise 6.5% to £819, almost three years after severe autumn 2023 flooding inundated hundreds of properties and caused tens of millions of pounds in damage. A subsequent government review found the event was driven by unprecedented rainfall and warned that climate change would double the frequency of similar events. "The steady rise in costs in Newry, Mourne and Down shows the lasting impact that extreme weather events can have on insurance prices, with providers factoring increased flood risk into their calculations for years afterwards," said Ian Wilson (pictured), managing director of CompareNI.com. Northern Ireland does have access to Flood Re, the reinsurance scheme covering high-risk properties across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, though continued premium rises in Newry, Mourne and Down almost three years on raise questions about how fully the scheme has cushioned pricing there - an area where district-level data on Flood Re's impact remains limited.
The second structural factor is a thinner provider base. The British Insurance Brokers' Association has stated that fewer home insurance providers operate in Northern Ireland than in Great Britain across both direct and brokered markets. That observation is reinforced by motor market data: CRASH Services found just four insurers underwrite more than half of all Northern Ireland motor policies - a pattern of limited competition that industry bodies say extends across the region's insurance sector generally, even though comparable market-share data specifically for home insurance is not published.
The third factor is a transparency deficit that makes the first two harder to address. The ABI does not publish a regional premium breakdown for Northern Ireland, relying instead on comparison-site data such as CompareNI's to inform its understanding of the local market. Without official data, regulatory scrutiny of the regional pricing gap is limited to what comparison platforms and brokers can evidence independently.
Within Northern Ireland, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive districts widened to more than £400. Antrim and Newtownabbey was the only other district to see a rise, up 3.5% to £457, while Ards and North Down remains the cheapest at £412, down 5.3%. The largest falls came in Fermanagh and Omagh down 11%, Mid and East Antrim down 8.5%, and Causeway Coast and Glens down 7.4%.
The affordability gap has drawn political attention. The Northern Ireland Assembly's Committee for Finance is running an inquiry into the region's banking and financial services landscape, and in May 2025 heard oral evidence from the ABI on why Northern Ireland consumers face higher premiums, with discussion covering the higher incidence of injury awards in the region and a perceived consumer gap in switching behaviour.
Wilson welcomed the overall UK-wide fall in home insurance prices but said Northern Ireland was failing to keep pace with other regions. "The widening gap between the cheapest and most expensive districts showed how much postcodes still influence what people pay," he said, adding that average costs in Northern Ireland remained more than three times higher than across the water. For brokers operating in Northern Ireland, the combination of a smaller provider base, elevated flood risk in specific districts and continued regulatory scrutiny points to a market where local knowledge and tailored advice carry more weight than in more competitive parts of Great Britain. With Stormont actively examining the drivers of the affordability gap and BIBA and the ABI both acknowledging the market's structural limitations, insurers may face growing pressure to explain regional pricing more clearly - even as the underlying cost pressures behind it show little sign of easing.
