Lost your house keys? What insurance actually pays for

You have lost your keys. Somewhere between the pub, the bus and the front door, a set of keys to your home has gone.

Two separate questions follow, and people usually mix them up:

1. Will insurance pay for new locks?
2. Should I change the locks at all?

They have different answers, and the second one matters more.

Is it covered? Three possibilities

Your locks were damaged in a break-in. This is the clearest case. Damage to locks caused by a burglary or attempted burglary is normally part of a buildings or contents claim, alongside the rest of the damage.

Your keys were stolen. Often covered, and your position is much stronger if you report the theft to the police and get a crime reference number. Do that first, before you ring the insurer.

You lost them. This is the weak case. Some policies include lock replacement after loss of keys; many treat losing keys as negligence and exclude it; and a good number sell it as an optional extra called key cover or key protection. Check which of those three you bought.

What “key cover” actually includes

Key cover is a small add-on product, sold by insurers and by standalone providers. It is not the same thing as your contents insurance.

As a worked example of the shape of these products, one UK insurer’s lost key cover is an optional add-on with an annual limit of up to £1,500 across all claims, plus small separate sub-limits — around £50 for keys locked inside the property and £50 for a key broken in the lock — and it covers new locks only where a genuine security risk has arisen, as assessed by the provider.

Note the two restrictions buried in that, because they are typical:

• Assessment, not choice. A provider may decide whether a security risk exists. You do not simply hand in a receipt.
• Like for like only. Replacements to a higher specification than what you lost are commonly excluded. If you were hoping the insurer would fund an upgrade to a better lock, they generally will not.

Figures and terms vary by provider and change. Treat the numbers above as an illustration of the pattern, not as your entitlement — read your own policy.

The excess usually kills the claim

This is the practical point nobody leads with.

Most home policies carry an excess — commonly £100 or more, and it is printed on your policy schedule — and your insurer pays only the amount above it. A single cylinder change on a uPVC door can land close to or below that figure.

So the arithmetic is frequently: claim £180 of work, pay a £100 excess, recover £80, and hold a claim on your record that may raise next year’s premium. For a small job, paying it yourself is often the better deal.

Claiming makes sense when the job is big: several doors, a whole-house rekey, a multipoint mechanism, or locks damaged in an actual burglary.

Should you change the locks? The security question

Insurance aside, the real question is whether anyone can find your door.

Change them if any of these is true:

• The keys were stolen, rather than lost
• They were on a ring with anything identifying your address — a fob, a tagged card, a parcel label, a gym key with your postcode on the account
• They went missing at or near home, where a finder could plausibly try doors
• They disappeared with your wallet, phone or bag, which together give someone your address and your keys

You can usually wait if they vanished in a way that tells a finder nothing — dropped in a field, lost abroad, gone in a river.

If you are unsure, the cautious answer is to change the lock on the door the key opens. One cylinder is not expensive, and the alternative is a bet.

Do this, in this order

1. If they were stolen, report it to the police and note the crime reference number. Do this before anything else — later claims depend on it.
2. Read your policy for the words “keys” and “locks”. Search the PDF. It takes two minutes and settles the question.
3. Ring your insurer and ask whether the work is covered, and what the excess is — before you book anyone. Some insurers will want to use their own contractor, and using yours first can forfeit the claim.
4. Get the locks changed if the security test above says so.
5. Keep the invoice. No invoice, no claim.

If you are locked out right now

That is a different and more urgent problem, and there is a worse-than-average chance of being overcharged while you are standing in the cold. Read locked out in London: first steps and the locksmith overcharging scam before you ring anyone.

If you are a tenant, who pays is a separate argument with its own answer: who pays for a lockout — tenant or landlord.

If your claim is refused

Your insurer must give you a reasonable explanation. Complain to them in writing first. If it is not resolved within eight weeks, take it to the Financial Ombudsman Service — it is free, and they have the power to put things right.

Under current rules an insurer cannot reject a claim on the grounds of what you told them, provided you took reasonable care to answer their questions honestly and to the best of your knowledge.

The one-line version

Stolen keys: report to the police, then claim. Lost keys: check whether you ever bought the cover, then check whether the excess leaves anything worth claiming. Either way, decide on changing the lock based on whether a finder could identify your door — not on whether someone else will pay.

Sources

• MoneyHelper — why providers might reject your insurance claim (government-backed, free)
• Financial Ombudsman Service — home insurance complaints
• Homeprotect — lost key cover, cited above as a published example of add-on limits
• Swinton — lock replacement and repair cover guide

We sell nothing, take no commission and recommend no insurer. Checked 22 September 2026 — policy terms and limits change, so read your own wording.