'Protected' No Claims?

Duckman9999

Is it actually worth paying to protect no claims discount?

I have a quote from a reputable insurer which is £150 less than any I can get which include protection. I just went onto moneysupermarket's comparison site and tried entering my details with a (fictitious) recent £2000 claim. If I marked it as 'not affecting my NCD' I was quoted £545. If I changed it to 'affected my NCD' the quote went up to £546!

So, the 'protection' saves me £1 on my premium.

I'm confused...

Natbag

How many years NCD have you got? Most companies see 5 as the maximum (but will write more on paper), so if you had a claim you would drop 2 years, leaving you with 3 as well as a fault claim on your file and affecting your premiums for the next 3 years.
Did you as well as ticking the 'affected my NCD' box change the number of years NCD you have on the quote as outlined above? That may be what would affect the price. But different insurers will give cheaper quotes in different circumstances.
I protected my NCD this year and have had a £400 fault claim (damn ice), and it doesn't seem to be affecting my quotes too much at the moment, but I think that's because of limited time special offers.
There'll always be competition in the marketplace, it's very fierce, and either way you should usually be able to get a competitive quote, it just depends what's available at your renewal. But then you don't have to stay with your current insurer for the full year - if you find a better offer at any time during your policy year you can switch (as long as you haven't made a claim that year).

Duckman9999

Thanks Natbag

I have 5 years protected, with an 'at fault' claim 15 months' ago. But to see what difference it would have made if I didn't currently have protection, I edited details to show a £2k claim this year and tried it with protected and not protected options. It made £1 difference.

Natbag

But if you did a quote with a fault claim on there, and let's say your NCD wasn't protected at the time of that claim, your NCD would be 3 years at renewal, so you'd need to change the quote details to reflect that.
If you had your NCD protected at the time of that claim, you'd still have to declare the claim but would still have 5 years NCD to use on the quote.
Hope that makes sense and we're not confusing each other lol!

Quentin

No. He had protected NCD at the time of the claim. Thus he still has full NCD, so the £1 difference being quoted if he now removes his protection element is correct.

Natbag

He did at the time of his actual fault claim, but aren't we talking about the fictitious additional fault claim here which is hypothetically looking at how a claim would affect quotes in the future if he were to not bother protecting his NCD this year? Think I'm confused.com!

Duckman9999

Err, sorry if I've confused everyone.

Ignore my actual position!

The fictitious quotes were to try to see what would have happened if I HAD or HADN'T protected my NCD before I had a claim, to try to work out if it is worth paying the extra to protect for the coming year.

Natbag

In that case you would need to adjust your NCD to 3 years for a quote had you not protected your NCD the year in which you made the (fictitious) claim, but if you had protected it you can get a quote with the full 5 years NCD