Expensive car insurance

rodneyb

Hello

this is my first post. I've got a question about car insurance, as I was expecting my insurance cost to drop slightly this year but unfortunately it went up by £100.

I've checked directline, moneysupermarket, confused.com, comparethemarket and obtained what I thought to be the best quote.

I am wondering what is the key determinant or driver of cost for my insurance. I have a friend with a Porsche Cayenne 4.5 V8 (which is an insurance group 20) and he has a similar driving history to me. He was born in the UK and has held his licence for 20 years and pays £450 per year for comp insurance and I pay £700 for a Nissan XTrail 2.5 litre.

Would it be better for me to speak with a broker rather than go through the turnstiles of the web sites as:
- I wasn't born in the UK, lived here since 2003
- my wife finally moved to the UK in 2009 (we had a house overseas)
- my wife has an EU licence

Here are the costs I think make my insurance so expensive:
- not born in the UK £50
- not having a UK licence for the max possible (16 years was the highest value I could select) £50
- doing business miles & 20,000 miles per year £200 ( just shy of £200)

The frustrating thing is that I have held a UK licence for 6 years now, but had an Australian licence for 17 years previously. I have had no claims, not even a speeding fine in the last 11 years. My wife has a similar driving record.

Now to confuse things a little, the above numbers were not based on my Nissan XTrail, but on my friend's Porsche Cayenne but using the slightly cheaper 3.2 litre and not his thumping 4.5 litre. Using the Cayenne as a base gave me a better comparison because I could use my details and just change car to compare with his price. So the total price of Cayenne insurance for me would be £980 and I can explain (as above) £300 of difference between my friend's quote and mine. I didn't change any of my wife's details but obviously that would have some bearing on the quote as well.

Does anyone have any experience here, or an opinion on what could be a solution? What I'm not trying to do is out and out save money by going to a 1 litre Nissan Micra or taking public transport. We travel to the snow every year hence we use the 4x4 aspect of my car. What I am trying to do is work out whether there is a better route to access insurance in my instance than go through the turnstiles of the websites, for example, perhaps there is a specialist broker.

thanks,

Rodney

Caz3121

It is not only driving history but address/postcode that can have an impact on the quote - did you use your friends postcode for the comparison?

crazyguy

Also if you ever use a comparision site make sure that you alter your phone numbers otherwise your details get passed to the insurance firms to stalk you and in most of the cases are re sold again and you are put on new sms data lists.