Young drivers - What insurance company?

robfosters

robfosters

robfosters

Caporegime
Joined
1 Dec 2010
Posts
53,766
Location
Welling, London
My little bro is 18 and close to passing his test. best I got from a comparison site for a 1.4 litre Fiesta was £7k :eek:

I presume comparison sites are not the best for youngsters, as I imagine the companies don't want the business and just bounce back stupid figures.

Anyone here got a good recommendation for him?
 
The Admiral group are usually quite good. But I imagine that they were on the comparison site that you used.

Did you try all the usual tactics to get the price down? Adding older drivers, high excess, trying fully comp as well as 3pfat etc?
 
Adding parents brought mine down to £2k on my first year, that was 5 years ago though. Try putting down parked on the street, the Admiral group seem to drop the price for some reason on that one. Comparison websites are fine, but find the cheapest 5 say, and then ring them to see if they'll do any better.
 
Top tips:
  1. Don't live in the hood.
  2. Don't buy a car that eleventy million other people of same age/gender have written off.
  3. Add parents as named drivers.
 
Try smaller brokers, my first year was with a company called Academy insurance who beat everyone by at least £500 for my first year, second year I switched to Premium choice and I've been with Adrian Flux ever since. You'll have to pick up the phone and spend a while phoning around to get a decent quote.
 
robfosters said:
Even Admiral's coming out at over £7k What a ridiculous situation this is.
Click to expand...

Your doing something "wrong" (not lying) on the forms.

Westyfield2 said:
[*]Add parents as named drivers.[/LIST]
Click to expand...

This.

Having been driving my bmw since I was 18 Ive had to learn a couple things on how to get that big old price down. If I did mine by the book back then, the quote were about 8k. But instead for the first year I think I paid 2k. Still a lot, but a lot better then 8!

1. Add women. Doesnt matter if its the mother, sisters, auntys.. whoever! and a couple women to the policy who have been driving a couple years and it'll bring the price down massively. MUST: If you want to keep it legal, then only add them as named drivers, dont put them down as the main driver of the vehicle. By putting them as named, all your saying is they may drive the car. Chances are they probably never will but, it'll bring the cost down a lot!! For me, adding males, including my dad who had been driving for 40years without any claims.. it didnt really touch the price.

2. Lie. Why yes, It is kept in my garage. And yes, it is in the secure non public carpark at work!

3. Milege. Realisticly, sure he'll probably do the average of 10k miles a year. But, thats 10k miles of chances of a a crash. No Mr insurance company, I only do 2k miles a year.

4. Car Value. This massively puts the cost of the insurance up. But, even if you put half the value, you can still argue it should you need to make a claim.

5. Comparison websites. After doing thousands of claims, I noticed that the way the comparision websites ask questions, inst always the same as the questions you might be asked from going direct, or even better, it doesn't copy the info over correctly.
So, lets take the Car Value for example. Maybe your putting in 2K in on Admirals website in the box you HAVE to fill in, which then puts the quote right up.
But, quite often when you fill it in on a comparison website and then follow the quote through to a company, your'll notice that that piece of info hasnt actually copied over at all! Meaning, thats 2K that on that direct quote then doesnt exist.

And the best company? Admiral.
 
ChocolateStarfishRammer said:
Your doing something "wrong" (not lying) on the forms.



This.

Having been driving my bmw since I was 18 Ive had to learn a couple things on how to get that big old price down. If I did mine by the book back then, the quote were about 8k. But instead for the first year I think I paid 2k. Still a lot, but a lot better then 8!

1. Add women. Doesnt matter if its the mother, sisters, auntys.. whoever! and a couple women to the policy who have been driving a couple years and it'll bring the price down massively. MUST: If you want to keep it legal, then only add them as named drivers, dont put them down as the main driver of the vehicle. By putting them as named, all your saying is they may drive the car. Chances are they probably never will but, it'll bring the cost down a lot!! For me, adding males, including my dad who had been driving for 40years without any claims.. it didnt really touch the price.

2. Lie. Why yes, It is kept in my garage. And yes, it is in the secure non public carpark at work!

3. Milege. Realisticly, sure he'll probably do the average of 10k miles a year. But, thats 10k miles of chances of a a crash. No Mr insurance company, I only do 2k miles a year.

4. Car Value. This massively puts the cost of the insurance up. But, even if you put half the value, you can still argue it should you need to make a claim.

5. Comparison websites. After doing thousands of claims, I noticed that the way the comparision websites ask questions, inst always the same as the questions you might be asked from going direct, or even better, it doesn't copy the info over correctly.
So, lets take the Car Value for example. Maybe your putting in 2K in on Admirals website in the box you HAVE to fill in, which then puts the quote right up.
But, quite often when you fill it in on a comparison website and then follow the quote through to a company, your'll notice that that piece of info hasnt actually copied over at all! Meaning, thats 2K that on that direct quote then doesnt exist.

And the best company? Admiral.
Click to expand...

What appalling advice. Saying your car is worth half the value that it actually is to reduce the cost leaves the insurer in the comfortable position of being able to deny your insurance claim as the insurance is invalid. Exactly the same can be said of the mileage example.

Adding older named drivers is a good thing, as is parking on the drive/in a secured car park, but it doesn't mean that you can straight out lie and say that it's parked in a garage, as if you have to claim, they may well look for any excuse to claim the policy is invalid. Therefore if you live in a terrace with no off-street parking available, claiming to have a garage is rather counter productive - might as well just not bother with insurance TBH.

And yes, for me Admiral has always been cheapest, closely followed by their stablemates (Elephant, Bell, Diamond etc). Having both parents on my policy, as well as my postcode, driveway overnight and secure car park allowed me to get my first year's insurance down to £1900 for 10 months using Admiral's fast-track policy - this is also a useful thing to do, as you're only paying for 10 months, plus it counts as a year's no-claims to Admiral, so come renewal you'll have a years NCB. Another thing, when renewal comes, they'll attempt to shaft you with the quote, so just run a quick quote on Elephant's site and use that quote when calling Admiral - the call centres are the same, so they'll price match without quibble.
 
Last edited:
Garage and parked on drive comes out more expensive for me...

Actually that post is Janesy B's worst post of the month, not only offering advice that could increase the cost of the policy, it could potentially invalidate it too. Good work.
 
Marvin said:
What appalling advice. Saying your car is worth half the value that it actually is to reduce the cost leaves the insurer in the comfortable position of being able to deny your insurance claim as the insurance is invalid. Exactly the same can be said of the mileage example.

Adding older named drivers is a good thing, as is parking on the drive/in a secured car park, but it doesn't mean that you can straight out lie and say that it's parked in a garage, as if you have to claim, they may well look for any excuse to claim the policy is invalid. Therefore if you live in a terrace with no off-street parking available, claiming to have a garage is rather counter productive - might as well just not bother with insurance TBH.
Click to expand...


Well, each to their own.

Ive had the unfortunate experience of having to claim 3 seperate times now on my insurance. 1 my own fault (not paying attention), and twice having been hit by others.

With the one that was my fault, all went fine, the question of how much my car was worth in reference to what was put on the quote never came up. My car was a write off and I fought them for 2 months on the price they wanted to give me for it till I ended up actually getting more then I paid for the car in the first place.

The other two times, I went straight to their insurance, as I would advise anyone when its not their fault. Both times Ive had extremily good service because where their client is to blame, you can really feel the difference and whatever you say goes attitude. On my own insurance, I didn't have a courtesy car or anything like that. And both times, with quite ease, Ive been able to get them to pay for one for me right up till a whole week after I had received a cheque for my car. Both times played the card that my car has been a "high performance sports car" and got pretty decent courtesy cars aswell.

At the end of the day. Everyone knows insurance company's rip us off simply because they can.

I just play them at their own game. And would advise others to aswell.
 
ChocolateStarfishRammer said:
At the end of the day. Everyone knows insurance company's rip us off simply because they can.

I just play them at their own game. And would advise others to aswell.
Click to expand...

I'm going to leave this here:


Hxc said:
Also, to all those claiming that insurers are blatantly profiteering, look up their combined ratios.

The Admrial group, who I believe rather a significant proportion of people on here utilize, and are considered to be by far and away one of the best insurers for young drivers (me included), report a combined ratio for the 2011 financial year of 87%, down from 91% the year before. That means 87% of the money taken in for premiums was paid out in claims last year, and 91% the year before! There's less than a 15% margin on the insurance premiums themselves.

It's also important to note that Admiral are by far one of the best performing insurers, in 2010, the UK averaged combined ratio was 119% - yep. Insurers were LOSING money on the premiums they took in. The year before it was even greater. Of course this is mitigated and often reversed by the fact that insurers invest the money you put into them, but it does put to rest that they are ripping you off on the cost of your premium.

This also sort of suggests that maybe, just perhaps, insurers know what they are doing when they are setting premiums, however illogical it may seem to the consumer at times.

Like I said, if you think there is a better way of judging insurance premiums, go propose it to someone and get backing; if there's money to be made by the way you want to do it, you'll make an awful lot of it.
(source: Admiral Group 2011 FY reports)
Click to expand...
 
Janesy B said:
Unfortunately you're not just insuring yourself against damage to your own car, but to others. Also what's the point of insuring a 1k Fiesta fully comp, just go TPFT...
Click to expand...

TPFT is hugely more expensive than fully comp, especially on comparison websites.

Trebled the old mans quote when he did his Astra last week, doubled the wife's quote on the Mini yesterday.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom