What is the max no claims bonus you can get on Car Insurance?

shaggy

Hi,

Touch wood, I've been claim free for around 15 years now so always protect my NCB . Each year I change insurance company, and depending on who I go with, at the end of the year some of them will not specify on the renewal docs any more than 5 years NCB because they claim that insurance companies only give max 5 years discount on car insurance.

As a result, my NCB has never really gone above 10 years according to my renewal docs. Should I fight it out with the insurance companies to specify a longer period in the hope that I'll get a bigger discount?

InsideInsurance

Most insurers max out at 5 years, a few count up to 9 years, dont know of any that give any form of credit for anything longer.

Be careful not to be trapped into marketing ploys as there are insurers that give a 75% discount for 5 years NCD (max) where as some that offer discounts for up to 9 years NCD (max) are only giving 70% discount.

Quentin

You may get a "bigger discount" from insurers that go to 9 years, but that doesn't mean they will be the cheapest for you! (Their premium may be higher to begin with)

If you provided your current insurer with proof in excess of 5 years ask them to give you the corrected proof at renewal time.

Otherwise keep a paper trail which you can use to (try and) prove your NCD to any insurer who will give you a better deal for NCD over 5 years.

keith1950

I completely agree, one insurer that gives up to 90% discount always comes out much higher than ones that max. out at 5 years.

shaggy

thanks for the helpful replies. The current insurer has said 10 years on the renewal docs, and to be honest its probably not worth fighting it out for them to state 15 years or whatever

And yes, already I have found savings of over £110 > simply by shopping around on confused.com etc.

NonGeographicalMan

shaggy wrote: »

thanks for the helpful replies. The current insurer has said 10 years on the renewal docs, and to be honest its probably not worth fighting it out for them to state 15 years or whatever

And yes, already I have found savings of over £110 > simply by shopping around on confused.com etc.

When I went to Admiral insurance they asked how many years NCD I had and I stated 23 years because that is how long my NCD has been at maximum without ever being knocked back. They accepted that without requiring documentation (in part perhaps because I had been insured with them until two years earlier although they still didn't know if I had made a claim whilst insured elsewhere) and then quoted 23 years on my next renewal that I used to go elsewhere.

So the above is by way of saying that some insurers will put down far more than 5 years NCD on your documentation if you quote your NCD as being that long (which I could justify in terms of when my NCD was not at maximum) even though Admiral's case a discount beyond 5 years makes no difference to the premium they quote you.

As I understand it the insurers all have the ability to pass bonus details between each other electronically (just as they also share them with the Motor Insurers Database) but for reasons of marketing competitiveness many of them currently refuse to do this.

At the end of the day the cheapest premium will not necessarily come from the insurer offering the biggest NCD discount. For instance www.quotemehappy.com only operate a standard 65% NCD discount but have some of the lowest gross premiums around, at least for new customers. LV (Liverpool Victoria) do a lot of advertising and say they give 75% maximum no claims but I have never ever found them competitive on my various low end sports car type vehicles (Fiat X1/9, MX5, MGF, MR2 Roadster).

Another point to watch out for is how good is your NCD protection. Esure at one stage only allowed you one claim in five years with their protected NCD before it affected your bonus. The largest number of insurance companies only let you have two claims in five years before your discount is affected but several big names like Admiral, MoreThan and AXA let you have two claims in three years and do not take claims more than three years ago in to account either for calculating the gross premium or in terms of claims that could knock your bonus protection.

Then in addition only Admiral Group (and clone brands of Admiral known as Bell Direct, Elephant and Diamond with precisely the same policy features but different pricing) and MoreThan offer you Guaranteed bonus protection where even if you had four claims in a year it would not reduce your NCD on renewal. What they don't tell you is that depending on the severity and total cost of these four claims they might simply refuse to renew your policy if you had made four or five claims in a year and you would also be refused a quote by 98% of other insurers in the marketplace until these claims dropped out of your record.

Then you also need to consider the excess on a policy as QuoteMeHappy and Admiral both have very low quoted excesses of £50 on many vehicles but these are dependent on using their own approved insurers for repairs. This rises to the more standard £300 excess charged by many other insures for a lot of vehicles if you insist on using a repairer of your choice.

As with low cost airlines you need to consider what hidden extras you are going to be stung with in return for a low headline price. For instance some of the firms with the lowesr quotes would charge you the largest possible amount to make a policy change like adding a driver, temporarily covering you to drive another vehicle or cancelling the policy early before the end of the term.