No claims bonus protection - is it worth it?

JennyB

I've managed to accumulate 5 years of no claims and have started thinking about whether I should take up no claims bonus protection. After spending ages getting insurance quotes I've figured out that it would cost me £30 to protect it (that's on a policy of £200). But my question is, is it worth it?

I don't know that much about car insurance as I've never made a claim :A but it seems like it's not entirely straightforward because from what I've been reading if you make a claim then your premium will go up anyway because you're deemed a higher risk even if the accident was not your fault. Also I've heard that when you make a claim your no claims bonus might just be 'stepped down' by a couple of years rather than lost entirely.

Any advice? :beer:

JennyB

Forgot to say - is the protection only with your current insurer? So if I had to make a claim would I only retain my no claims if I stuck with my current insurer and if I went to a new one they would no longer recognise my NCB?

This is quite crucial because I'm going with barclays this year because of their price match offer and I certainly won't stay with them on renewal as their original quote was the highest out of about 20 I got!

Astaroth

No advice but information

Your have a base premium which is based on what risk you represent. You will then possibly get a number of discounts from that for things like no claims discount, new customer, online, customer loyalty etc

If you have a claim with NCD protection then your NCD isnt affected but that doesnt mean that the base premium wont be. Though of cause if you have a 70% NCD you will only "see" 30% of the increase in premium.

Each insurer has their own rules but the general method is that a claim where the insurers are unable to get their money back will result in you losing 2 years of no claims discount. For most insurers this loss is from the maximum NCD they recognise rather than the number of years you have. So if you have a 20 year NCD and have a fault accident your ncd will then go down to 3 years (assuming that your insurers max out their ncd at 5 years)

With NCD protection you can have 1 "non recovered claim" per year but no more than 2 in 3 policy years.

With each insurer you go to you will be asked if you want to protect the NCD - no issues with switching insurers that I have ever heard of

Is it worth it? only a question you can answer, it is basically an insurance policy on your NCD... like all insurance (other than TPO, NI and EL which are legal requirements) it is a judgement call for your personal circumstances and appeitite for risk

ArchieB_2

The only insurers who won't increase the base premium or NCD regardless of how many claims you have is More Than.

Some companies also do guaranteed NCD - which means you can have an unlimited no of claims and your NCD won't be affected, however the base premium will be as per Astoraths comments.

There are other limits to the number of claims if you have protected NCD but the 2 in 3 years is most typical.