No Claims Protection - What's it worth?

RastaManBob

RastaManBob

RastaManBob

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It's that time of year when I have to deal with my car insurance renewal. I have now accrued four years NCB. This seems to enable me, for the first time, to opt for protected/guaranteed No Claims Protection. I understand the basics of what this service covers but I am not convinced I understand the value of it.

As a guideline, my insurance quotes are coming back at £800 without protection and £1000 with protection. Would you consider £200 is a price worth paying for No Claims Protection? I know the best way is to continue to get quotes for all eventualities and try and predict how my premium would change in various situations if I did/did not have an accident and did/did not protect the NCB. Whilst happy to do this it is very time consuming and I assumed there must be some sort of 'rule of thumb' that people tend to use when deciding whether to opt for this sort of thing.

I can obviously provide more details regarding the policy, but thought initially only the net difference between the two comparative quotes was needed.

Thanks!
 
£200 is ridiculous to protect NCB. I found the biggest insurance issues revolve around the postcode area and your age. If you're over 30, you are going to get good rates.

Since accruing 4yrs NCB myself it's barely made any difference - quite possible that the insurance inflation year after year has more than eaten the NCB away.
 
Protection can help you in certain situations.
However you still have to declare any accidents you've had.
So for example:

4yrs NCB
You have a prang and would lose, I believe 2yrs NCB.
Plus you've got an accident to declare.

So come renewal you will have:
Your Premium
A decrease because of your 2yrs NCB
An increase because of your accident.

If you have protected, then you'd see:
Your premium
A bigger decrease because of 4yrs NCB
An increase because of your accident.

So the overall saving won't be amazing, but does still mean you can get your full NCB discounts.

If protected NCB meant you could "negate" an accident - not have to declare it then it would be a no-braienr to protect it.
But as it stands it can be helpful but nothing amazing.
Also depends on how much they are charing you to protect the NCB. I've never had a heft charge for protection, so I tend to keep on taking it.
 
With a protected NCD it means you can have an accident and either your NCD won't be affected at all or it will reduce slightly (maybe a year off for example). So if you premium
will be significantly higher as a result of a lot or reduced NCB then it is worth it. Also remember that it compounds over the years. So if you have an accident and your NCD isn't protected then you'll have 4 years before you get back to your current level of dicount and will be paying higher premiums all that time.

You would still have an accident on your record though. So it doesn't entirely protect you against accidents affecting your premium.

Personally I think it's worth having.
 
if you crash you lose 2 years no claims bonus, if you pay £200 you don't, no brainer really - although I do find the £200 cost rather a heavy one!
 
Thanks for the replies. As in the original post, I am aware of what no claims protection does but not sure how much it is worth paying for. I'm mainly interested in what others think it is worth and as a rule of thumb how much they'd be willing to pay for it (above an equivalent quote without it).

With regards to the insurance, it'll be to cover a 23 year old male driving a Ford Mondeo MK2 (2000), 10, 000 miles per year (SDP&C). The postcode is within Greater London, which I assume makes some difference.
 
I wouldn't pay for it unless it was really cheap at least under £50

At 200 you need to make a claim every couple of years to make it worth while
 
It's worth having but that sounds a lot... have you shopped around, you already have a decent amount of ncb, you may well get a better deal with another company?
 
I've shopped around as best possible, I used all of the price comparison websites and then those not included within those too. I've then done manual searches on the insurers that come out best.

I'm reasonably happy with £800 as it was around £1100 last year (all details the same)... From that point of view £1000 including no claims protection does not seem too bad, but the potential of paying only £800 is very appealing... I'm finding it hard to justify £200 for no claims protection but having never had it I did not know if this was the norm. This was why I was wondering if people typically have a rule of thumb figure for it (e.g., X% of the renewal premium).
 
If that's the case it may be worth doing it then, the thing is if you do have a prang you will be paying a lit more as you will not only have an accident on record, but zero ncb... judgement call really
 
I didn't bother protecting my 5 years NCB (22 y.o). I think they wanted about £100 more on a policy already more expensive than the OP.

I've already lined their pockets enough this year so not protecting my NCB is a risk I'm willing to take.
 
I was going to protect my no claims until I did some quotes that showed me my premium increase if I had an accident.

Accident with no claims maintained was only £30 less on the renewall than 2 years no claims lost. At the end of the day you have to declare the accident anyway.

Try running a few quotes with a 5-10k fault accident one with your no claims protected and one with it dropped by two years, I bet it doesn't make anywhere near £200 difference!
 
mattyfez said:
You loose 2 years ncb with protection. Without protection you would have zero ncb.
Click to expand...

Sorry - I don't quite understand this.
Are you saying that with protection you still actually lose NCB?
The T&C's of protection I've always read say that I can have upto 2 claims within a 3yr period for no loss of NCB.
 
i got my no claims protected last week when mine came thro for renewal , cost and extra £40
 
mattyfez said:
You loose 2 years ncb with protection. Without protection you would have zero ncb.
Click to expand...

Disagree. Admiral policy is if you make 3 claims in a 3 year period you will lose 2 years no claims. If you make more than 3 claims in 3 years it drops to zero.

http://www.admiral.com/policyDocs/ADM.pdf (page 26)

With no protection you will generally lose 2 years no claims for your first accident if you have 4 years+ NCB.
 
I guess it depends on the individual t&c's?

I lost 2 years ncb when I wrote my car off a few years back. If I didn't have protection, I would be looking at zero ncb at renewal time
 
I claimed when my car was stolen I had 5+ years no claims they knocked me back down to 3 years as any years above 5 don't count

This was without any ncb protection on elephant
 
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