Car insurance - Protected no claims bonus

gjm1980

I have 9 years' no claims bonus which I pay extra to "protect" at each renewal. An recent mishap with a gate post means I'm now considering making a claim but am now wondering what having "protection" actually means. I've used Confused.com to see how my future renewals might be affected, and it looks like the quotes are about £200 more if I declare a claim, despite my "protection". Does anyone out there know why this might be?

InsideInsurance

Your protection protects the NCD itself, so you will still get the same % discount as you did before. What it doesnt do is protect the underlying premium.

So, hypothetically if you had an accident and it caused your base premium to jump to £1000 and your insurer used the traditional NCD discount scale with NCDP you'd still have the max 65% discount so premium is now £350 where as without NCDP you'd have dropped to 3 years NCD and so your new premium would be £500

Not all insurers use the same scale anymore and so you could find the benefit of the NCDP could be more or less

forgotmyname

Your premium was £500 that's what they rated you at. you get 50% off so pay £250.

You make a claim but its protected. They now rate you as a £1000 risk. You still have your 50% no claims so pay £500.

Lose 25% no claims and your premium would have been £750.

Its not a i can crash and not pay any extra card. Which may have been how some drivers treated it originally.

gjm1980

Thanks for the two replies on this. Both have explained how NCD protection works in a totally different way to what I thought, but very clear now!! It basically protects the discount rate, and has no influence on the claim history itself. Not the answer I hoped for but good to know, so cheers!