Car Insurance for younger drivers

wockys

I'm looking for advice on getting car insurance for my 17 year old son. In your experience is it better to add him to my existing insurance or is it better to start him on his own? Your help is much appreciated.

bouncydog1

Have a read of all the threads on here for the best information - there are loads of them.

One thing to remember is that if he is the main user of a vehicle you must tell insurers rather than pretend that it is you to keep the price down. Penalties of not doing this are that the policy is cancelled when they find and you then have to disclose this each time you take out a policy in the future.

If he is just going to use your existing vehicle occasionally then add him as an additional driver but make sure that the insurers will cover him when he passes his test (presuming he hasn't) and ask what additional premium will be charged at that point - some just won't cover young drivers at all.

We bit the bullet, bought a car and insured it in our 17 year old's name with existing insurers as they gave a good introductory bonus based on our (2 x 50+ year olds) experience and we had 2 other cars with them. Expect to pay around £2k for a low group car depending on where you live - adding parents to the policy (providing they are conviction/accident free) will keep cost down. If you haven't bought a car yet, search for the groups on some of the motoring websites - just because a car is little doesn't automatically mean a low insurance group.

oscarward

Our son was taking lessons and we looked for insurance to either add him to an existing policy or his own. The results were pretty staggering and fairly equal. Most insurers wouldn't quote and the cheapest was Quinn at about £2800.

In the end when he was learning we used colingwood who will do a monthly or weekly policy. It only covers while they have a experienced driver alongside and doesn't generate NCB. Once the test is passed it is no longer available, but if he does prang as it is in his name it doesn't affect your NCB which it would if you added him to your policy.

About £80+ per 28 days but the advantage is you after the first month you can buy weeks at a time, useful for half term time.

Once he passed his test we bought him a Hyundai i10, not much chance of getting in to trouble in that , he also took Pass Plus and we decided to go with i-kube who fit a GPS gadget to the car. For a 40% discount he forgoes the pleasure of driving between 11pm and 5am. i-kube worked out most under 25 new drivers had accidents between those times. There is a £45 admin fee if the car moves more than 100yds between those hours, so you can shunt it on and off the drive. If he was out after 11pm he would be in the pub so no pain not to drive. Total cost about £1500 for the year.

I understand there are other providers now so search around.

Quentin

wockys wrote: »

is it better to add him to my existing insurance or is it better to start him on his own?

If you have protected your ncd then it is cheaper to have him on your policy.

If it's unprotected, are you happy to risk losing it if he causes any claim(s)?

losgiganteskid

Have you considered Admiral - they will cover your son for a 10 month duration policy. If he is claim free after this period they will invite renewal for 12 months but give a discount equal to what he would have had after 12 months, the bigger plus is that if you time the inception date right, your son will/may be 18 at renewal, so the premium will be rated on an 18 yr old with a 1 yr ncb. If you then renew with Admiral for another year they will allow a 2nd yr NCB at the end of that period, which you will find most other insurers will honour.c