Landlord Insurance - 'trap'

I met a fellow landlord in my Virgin gym this week. He highlighted an issue he had with his landlord insurance. Interestingly it was the complete opposite to my issue with my landlord insurance company.

He had bought a buy-to-let property in Hull several years ago with a Mortgage Express mortgage. Recently the property had been broken into and suffered £5,000 worth of damage. The property was insured but he had not increased the sum insured since the purchase of the property. The original re-build cost was in the order of £80,000. The insurance company has come back and is now arguing that the sum insured should be now £120,000 and that they will only pay out pro-rata on the £5,000. This seems to me to be very 'harsh'.

Has anybody come across a similar situation.? My fellow gym goer maintains that he has been caught out by ignorance rather than actively trying to under insure his buy-to-let property.

Looks to me that us landlords are at risk of get caught in a 'pincer movement' by these landlord insurance companies.

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