Can I insure a company car in an employees name?

mistyblu

My husband and I own a small IT company. We employee our son and last year we bought our first company car and took out company car insurance with Privilege. Our son is the sole driver and does about 15000 miles a year (business and private). The insurance cost almost £900! This year we would like to insure the car under our son's name with business cover. This will cost under £500 with 3 years no claims. However, Direct Line have said that it is a legal requirement that the insurer is the registered owner. Of course, the company is the registered owner and I have read many articles that say you can indeed insure a car that is not in your name, as long as you inform the insurer of the fact. The company car situation is bad enough without having to pay such huge insurance policies on top. Anyone got any answers please?

1618

Yes,i have been doing so for the last 10 years.when i first tried this i found the vast majority of companies would not provide cover,however Direct Line have no problem they just state on the policy i am not the legal owner of the car

mistyblu

Thank you for that but Direct Line have insisted this morning that I have to change the registration into our son's name through the DVLA before they will give us insurance. The guy even went off and asked his manager. I didn't see an option on their website to enter owner information so I can't just do it online. How frustrating. I'd also be interested to know if there are any legal or tax implications in doing things this way, ie in the case of traffic or parking fines etc.

1618

just checked my policy,it gives my name has the policy holder and next to it says(who is not the legal owner but is the registered keeper of the car) this is also a 40k car!

mistyblu

Ah! Our Company is the registered keeper of the vehicle which is why Direct Line have insisted that I change the details at the DVLA I suppose. Presumably the log book for your car shows you as the Registered Keeper but the car was purchased by your company? The log book does not have a separate section for Owner and Registered Keeper which means the Registered Keeper, presumably, could sell or scrap the vehicle. Not a problem when it's our son but if we were ever to employ someone else, that's not a risk I would like to take.

mistyblu

OK. I've spoken to the DVLA helpline. The Owner of a vehicle is not stated on the log book. I asked what stops the Registered Keeper from selling or scrapping the vehicle and she wasn't able to give me an answer. The best she could suggest was to list the Registered Keeper as the Company but to also put the driver's name. This wouldn't work of course as the Insurance companies want the address where the vehicle is kept overnight.

So I called Direct Line again but this time the helpful chap said it was absolutely no problem and that they did it all the time. I had a quote within 5 minutes. The Registered Keeper is the Company, the driver is noted as the main sole driver, along with his home address and the address for correspondence is the company address. Sorted!

I can't believe I have spent so many days/hours trying to sort this out but I hope that by documenting it here, it will help someone, somewhere, someday! Thanks again to 1618 for taking the time to respond.

Premier_2

The DVLA are correct. The registration document only documents the registered keeper which may or may not be the legal owner.

However, some motor insurance proposals asks whether the vehicle is owned by and registered to the proposer.

Having said that, the initial information provided by Direct Line was definitely incorrect. There is no legal reason why a vehicle cannot be insured by someone that is neither the owner nor registered keeper. It may be their rule, but it is not a legal thing.

You can certainly have a vehicle insured by someone that is neither the owner and/or registered keeper. You need to ensure that the insurance company is made aware of this as not all insurers will accept such risk, but there are quite a few that will.

Note that as your son will be using his own 30% NCD on this vehicle, he cannot use that should he wish to insure another car (perhaps his own) at the same time. I guess as this is a family run business, you've given your son the car he wants anyway and has no intention of buying his own car for the time being, so he wins too by building up his own NCB