Biba Manifesto 2026: Biba to back contents cover pilot for vulnerable social renters

Trade body Biba has announced that it will join financial advocacy group Fair4All Finance in an FCA-supported campaign to support the UK’s social renters with schemes for affordable contents insurance.

This is according to Biba’s Manifesto 2026, revealed at a parliamentary event yesterday (14 January 2026), which highlighted that contents cover is a “significant and persistent” gap for the financially vulnerable group.

Indeed, the FCA’s Financial Lives survey revealed that a worrying 67% of renters from social residential landlords do not have contents insurance.

While Biba said that its members offer home insurance products aimed at those with low incomes, it explained that “frictions and inertias can mean that take-up of these products remains low and there are many who continue to face financial shocks without protection”.

Biba has therefore committed to lending its members support through Fair4All Finance’s planned pilot programme to trial alternative methods of increasing uptake of the cover, including an opt-out policy trial.

Deputy head of communications at Biba, Leighann Forsyth, told Insurance Times that Biba has been “looking for a while at how there are vulnerable customers on low incomes who don’t necessarily have contents insurance to protect them should the worst happen”.

Vulnerable renters

Forsyth described one such case study, a Dagenham woman whose house was entirely destroyed by grass fires near her home. A social tenant, unemployed and uninsured, she lost the entire contents of her house.

Forsyth continued: “We’ve been working with our members and there are products and schemes available, but there have been barriers that have stopped these schemes being taken up, or pushed out by registered social landlords.

“We’ve been working on our access committee with Fair4All Finance and they are looking at a pilot scheme to be launched this year.

“They’re going to do a pilot where the tenants are automatically opted in and if they want to opt out then they’d have to do so. They would pay a few pounds a month or so to get that contents cover, so they’ve got that protection.”