Insurer Offering £1000 cash for £40 extra

jimpix12

Hi guys, Had a call earlier from a Bell.co.uk Sales agent , my current car insurer, saying they were offering me £1000 in the case of a write-off (regardless of fault etc) on top of the market value of my car (around £30k) for one-off fee of £40, for the entire year.

Is this a good idea or bad?

forgotmyname

Yes if you have an agreed value policy, But i assume their current value for your car is
at least £1500 less than you think its worth. So you still get less than you think its worth.


Bargain for £40 not... Also means they have an extra £1000 to put towards repairs to stop them writing it off i guess.

jimpix12

Yeah, thought that after posting actually re: market value suddenly going down. Guess I won't take them up on it.

InsideInsurance

Given you believe the vehicle is currently worth £30k then the probability of a total loss is fairly slim (though obviously not 0)

What did they call the add on out of curiosity?

mikey72

It's a good offer.

For Bell.

If more than 1 in 25 of their customers have a fault accident that writes their car off they make a loss.
If it's 1 in 25 they break even.
If less than 1 in 25 do, they make even more profit.

Who thinks more than 1 in 25 of their customers write their cars off?

JamesUKA

Sounds a bit like playing the lottery - Maybe they'll dish out scratch cards for an extra £10 a month ?

InsideInsurance

mikey72 wrote: »

It's a good offer.

For Bell.

If more than 1 in 25 of their customers have a fault accident that writes their car off they make a loss.
If it's 1 in 25 they break even.
If less than 1 in 25 do, they make even more profit.

Who thinks more than 1 in 25 of their customers write their cars off?

A slightly simplistic argument as it depends if it is a rated product or not. You also need to consider both their demographics and which demographics it appeals to. Could get messy if you have a large proportion of sub £2k cars on your books all paying only £40 to increase payouts by anything from 50% to 200%

mikey72

InsideInsurance wrote: »

A slightly simplistic argument as it depends if it is a rated product or not. You also need to consider both their demographics and which demographics it appeals to. Could get messy if you have a large proportion of sub £2k cars on your books all paying only £40 to increase payouts by anything from 50% to 200%

Providing more than 1 in 25 have a fault accident, and write them off.
But I agree it's simplistic.

Bell no doubt only offer it to those least likely to have a fault accident, and to owners of 30K cars that are unlikely to ever be written off.
So in reality it's probably all pure profit for them.

dacouch

InsideInsurance wrote: »

A slightly simplistic argument as it depends if it is a rated product or not. You also need to consider both their demographics and which demographics it appeals to. Could get messy if you have a large proportion of sub £2k cars on your books all paying only £40 to increase payouts by anything from 50% to 200%

I wonder how much the claims ratio for theft and / fire claims for the customers on this scheme with sub £2k cars is

InsideInsurance

Given current repair costs, it wouldnt even need to go that far, accidentally clip a wall/ gatepost etc and go to a high street dealership and it would be a total loss - just replacing the front wing on our VW was circa £1800

mikey72

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Given current repair costs, it wouldnt even need to go that far, accidentally clip a wall/ gatepost etc and go to a high street dealership and it would be a total loss - just replacing the front wing on our VW was circa £1800

Only on the initial quote for the insurer.
Not after the rebate.

And certainly not if done privately.