MoneySavingExpert.com Car Insurance
Feature by Martin Lewis, MoneySavingExpert
Car insurance prices have fallen 40% over the past two years, according to the AA. But with a rise in fraudulent claims, its latest index predicts an increase of up to 8% in 2015; others think 10% is possible. So to help you drive down costs, let me answer your most common questions… Q. Is this only something you can do if you’re at renewal? A. No, everyone should be checking their price right now, even if you only signed up to a new deal a few months ago. Unless you’ve claimed, you can usually cancel a policy for a fee of around £50 and get a refund for the rest of the year (though you won’t earn no claims for that year). It’s worth checking if it’s worth it.
Q. My renewal’s only six weeks away, should I just wait? A. It’s likely if you did try and cancel and get a new policy now, the cancellation fee will diminish any savings – so that’s a bit futile. Yet there is another trick –
www.aviva.co.uk, www.
postoffice.co.uk and
www.lv.com quotes last 60 days, so why not grab them now and you’re effectively locking in those prices in case they rise in the meantime.
Q. Are the savings that great? Can’t you just auto-renew? A. Never just auto-renew without checking elsewhere, often it just lets insurers smack a price rise on you, as it knows apathy means many will keep paying more and more.
I’m not saying auto-renewing will never be your cheapest option just that it should never be done without checking and comparing elsewhere first. Q. So it’s just a question of getting on a comparison site? A. That’s the route many use, but there are
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steps to really kick it up. It’s important to understand that there’s no one cheapest provider, so it’s a case of following a system.
Never just do one comparison, you need a benchmark of a few comparisons to find out where’s cheapest. There’s a system to follow fully explained at
www.mse.me/carinsurance. In a nutshell…
Combine comparison sites. They don’t all cover the same insurers, so combining a number of sites is the best way to really make a meaningful saving. My current top picks for a typical driver are
www.moneysupermarket. com,
www.confused.com, and www.
comparethemarket.com
Check insurers that comparisons miss. Comparison sites let you compare 100s of insurers quickly but they don’t capture the entire market. The biggies, including Aviva,
www.directline.com and
www.zurich.co.uk only offer their products directly.
More than one car at home? Comparison sites can only cope with one car at once so don’t include multi-car discounts. Therefore you should always manually check those that offer it. The big one is
www.admiral.com multi-car, but
www.churchill.com,
www.directline.com and
www.privilege.com also offer it.
I’m not saying they’ll win, but that you should check.
Difficult to insure? Use a broker. If you’ve difficult circumstances (eg, past bans or big accidents) that make getting insurance difficult, a comparison site is less likely to help as these are mainly focused on ‘normal’ policies.
You may be better off finding a local broker - see the British Insurance Brokers’ Association website (
www.biba.org.uk), as these can sometimes find a cheaper deal for you.
To advertise in thewire t. 07720 429 613 e.
the.wire@btinternet.com
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