Car Insurance - is it going up in price again?

[Welly]

Struggled to get (what I was expecting to be) a decent quote on the 2010 Citroen Diesel we have. I'd have thought being fairly newish and driven by either of two middle-aged drivers with over 9 years NCB we would have got a really good deal.

The existing policy went through the roof at renewal stage, I called them up and they WOULD NOT budge on price I even felt like they were glad I cancelled the cover

Best I managed was £260.00 with Direct Line and more because the Ovlov is insured with them also, actually the Ovlov is about the same price

I know 406's get hammered a bit on insurance but do Shitruns also? are French cars rated/loaded for insurance purposes? I wonder if they're a can of worms in the bodyshop? i.e. you damage the front end of a Citroen and the petrol tank falls off?

[PeterN]

I go on to Confused.com every year and manage to pay the same or even less some years, I usually have to change companies though, it did go up last year I think because I am past 75 but I am still only paying about £150, that's with Rias.

Peter

[Doggy]

Mine's just south of £300, but I am declaring 20k miles/year.
Bizarrely they give me a discount for having Mrs Doggy on the policy.

[PeterN]

That seems to be general, I get a discount on my insurance for having the wife on it and she gets one for having me on hers, wonderful idea.

Peter

[Welly]

I did try go compare but they started at £300.00 and went Northwards very quickly

I have seen cheap(er) policies around but once you start picking some options......

Declared 10K miles (main car)
Business Use for both of us
Guaranteed* Hire Car
Protected No Claims
Legal Protection
£150.00 excess

I tend to pick the 'add-ons' after the episode with the Mitsoobeeshee FTO / Foreign Lorry interface of 2006.

[trufflehunt]

I'm on £184 a year with Saga
About £1 less than last year with same company.

Prior to that, with different companies each year, it went from
about £240 to £225.

The couple of times in the last 5 years, that I've strayed from the price
comparison sites to check out Direct Line, the quotes have been straightforwardly uncompetitive.
For both the 406 , and the little 106 diesel I had before that.

Me. 64 years old. 8000 miles a year.

[Welly]

Just checked the insurance groupings for our two cars:

Shitrun = group 15

Volvo = group 34

[benczuk]

Have you tried Admiral?

T'wifes cars is with them and is due for renewal next month. The renewal price with them is £30 cheaper than the cheapest quote on money supermarket so I will be sticking with them for the 3rd year running

[PeterN]

You need to be old and live in the sticks like me.

Peter

[Doggy]

Just checked the insurance groupings for our two cars:

Shitrun = group 15

Volvo = group 34

My 406 = group 29

[highlander]

Insurance groups mean nothing anymore.

Until insurance companies are legally obligated to explain exactly how your personal insurance premiums were calculated, then they could literally be plucking the figures out of their excrement outlet.

It's weird - I buy a phone line from BT and they send me a bill showing the line rental, plus the cost, duration, and destination telephone number of every call I've made in that month, plus any extra services I add on there, plus VAT. But I'm not legally required to have a phone line. But if I have a car, I'm legally required to have insurance. And NONE of the insurers will tell you how your premium was worked out.

[OllieNZ]

Insurance groups mean nothing anymore.

Until insurance companies are legally obligated to explain exactly how your personal insurance premiums were calculated, then they could literally be plucking the figures out of their excrement outlet.

It's weird - I buy a phone line from BT and they send me a bill showing the line rental, plus the cost, duration, and destination telephone number of every call I've made in that month, plus any extra services I add on there, plus VAT. But I'm not legally required to have a phone line. But if I have a car, I'm legally required to have insurance. And NONE of the insurers will tell you how your premium was worked out.

This ^
I've just had the renewal through for the jimny £150 more than last year, yet I can go elsewhere for half the price. How does that work? Unfortunately kompare the meerkat doesn't like modified vehicles much

[trufflehunt]

Insurance groups mean nothing anymore.

Until insurance companies are legally obligated to explain exactly how your personal insurance premiums were calculated, then they could literally be plucking the figures out of their excrement outlet.

It's weird - I buy a phone line from BT and they send me a bill showing the line rental, plus the cost, duration, and destination telephone number of every call I've made in that month, plus any extra services I add on there, plus VAT. But I'm not legally required to have a phone line. But if I have a car, I'm legally required to have insurance. And NONE of the insurers will tell you how your premium was worked out.

Not sure how meaningful what you suggest would actually be.
The baseline of how an insurance company works is the assessment of risk, and that's done by actuaries.
If the company makes a profit out of a particular group of driver 'types' in any one year, they might take actions
to make more money from them. Or, if they lose money in a different group of driver 'types', they might eventually
decide to just not bother with that group, and quote ridiculously high premiums to , effectively, send people elsewhere.

For example, as a 24 year old in 1976, just bought a 150bhp Triumph TR5, I knew fine well that Norwich Union ( now Aviva )
were not remotely interested to insure me. I scanned the back pages of Exchange and Mart to find the companies, and insurance
brokers who would. For years, I insured fast cars with an outfit called Leadenhall Motor Policies. Someone who drove a Ford Escort
would never have heard of them, nor they him, because they weren't interested in his business.


In terms of seeing how your premium was worked out, what would you want to see ?

[highlander]

I guess what I'm mostly interested in is transparency.

Seriously - my son got his first car just over a year ago. He lives at home with us, and was 21 at the time. Common sense dictates that you should buy a low-powered car, with a good Euro NCAP safety rating, in a low insurance group, in order to reduce the premium. We found it was cheaper for him to insure a 1996 Mazda MX-5 1.8 than it was to buy a 2010 Nissan Micra 1.0, or a 2009 Vauxhall Corsa 1.0. And we have absolutely no idea why.

Why is it that when we were looking at these cars for him, some companies seemed to offer cheaper quotes for fully-comprehensive cover than they did for 3rd party only, or 3rd party fire & theft?

Why was it cheaper for me to insure a 2005 Maserati 4200 GT (a luxury GT with a Ferrari-derived 4.2 V8, originally costing around £75,000) than it was to insure my old 1999 Peugeot 406 LX 1.8? (this was back in 2010, just before I bought the Coupe).

What does my job title really have to do with the cost of my insurance policy? There's never an option for "Network Analyst", so I have to pick something like "COMPUTER CONTROLLER" or "COMPUTER SUPPORT" or something like that. And depending on which one I choose, even if all other details remain the same, the quote varies in price, sometimes by as much as 10%. I'm not necessarily driving THIS vehicle for work purposes, so what does it matter what I do for a living?

Your address, I can understand; insurance is based on risk, and those who live in areas plagued with car-related crime should expect their premiums to be higher. But none of these policy documents actually spell it out for you, they just give you a figure and you are expected to pay it.

What I want to see is something like:

This year, your premium is: £xxx.xx

Factors which affect your premium include:

Your address: 221B Baker Street, London
- This address is in an area which is affected by car-related crime, including break-ins and joyriding, thus increasing your premium

Your age: 36
- You are in an age bracket which statistically includes the most safe drivers, thus lowering your premium

Your vehicle: Peugeot 406 LX, 1999
- Your vehicle is now over 10 years past end-of-production, meaning parts may be more difficult to obtain, and may cost more to purchase. Therefore if you have to claim a repair on this vehicle against your policy, the costs will be excessive compared to those on a newer vehicle.

Modifications to your vehicle:
-- Spoiler
-- After-market alloy wheels

- Your vehicle has been modified with parts that, while they do not increase the performance, they do differ from factory specification, may be more likely to attract thieves to your vehicle, and thus these modifications increase your premium.

I'm not looking for someone to personally write each thing for each person, it'd just be nice to have the policy state specifically "factors x, y and z increased your premium" and "factors a, b and c reduced your premium". Have a set of pre-written paragraphs that explain why each factor had the effect it had on your premium, and give the Go Quote Me a Happy Meerkat comparison sites access to display that kind of information as well for each insurance quote they find when you search. It can't be that hard, seriously.

[trufflehunt]

Now that list is really interesting.