Your opinion about high car insurance premiums in B2-B12 postcodes

Aretnap

By the way when you say "a quote" how much shopping around have you done? On Go Compare for a B9 postcode I picked at random from Google maps, an 8 year old 1.25 litre Punto, and a 30 year old driver with no convictions and 10 years no claims the cheapest quite I got was Admiral at £803. Which is admittedly a bit more than I pay in my leafy Cambridge suburb, but still suggests than an insurer that wants £3.4K is taking the proverbial, unless there's something more than your postcode which marks you out as high risk.

Added - or if it's a brand new Punto, £710 from the AA. An insurer which quotes you £3.4K is probably telling you that they don't want your business for whatever reason. Oblige them and look elsewhere.

DUTR

sean_30 wrote: »

Hi there,
I was recently given a quote for my car insurance, the quote was £3400 for insuring a fiat punto. I have 10 years no claims, no convictions, high voluntary excess, etc but just because I live in a B9 post code my insurance premium has gone through the roof. Now, who do I complain to, no one, the fact that I am a good driver with no previous claims goes unnoticed. I can understand that there is certain criteria when insuring someone, age, risk, convictions, crime rate, etc. I then realised that the situation was the same for the residents of B2-B12 postcodes, that is probably around 50000 drivers paying overpriced premiums.

Are you in similar situation and had same experience? What can be done if anything and I am not talking about lying in order to bring the cost of your policy.

I live in Bham, fortunately not an inner city area, insurance bandings by postcode

sean_30

Hi Aretnap,
thanks for that, I have done usual which was comparisson sites, I think that £710 does not sound that bad. Like you say they may not want the business and that is something else entirely. In terms of insurance policy option and tailoring please refer to the following search term
american car insurance on wikipedia(they are not letting me post a link:(
and you will notice things like maximum liabilities,etc. I have to stress again that anything can be tailored..

Aretnap

American car insurance isn't relevant to he British market - it operates under very different laws to ours. In some states insurance isn't compulsory at all, in other states it can have a fairly small cap on third party liabilities. In Britain though the law stipulates that you must have a policy which provides unlimited cover for personal injury claims and a minimum of £1million for third party property damage, unless you're lucky enough to have a spare £500,000 to deposit with the Senior Courts in which case you can self insure instead. So even if you could find an insurer willing to offer you a policy which didn't cover some particular types of third party injuries, that policy wouldn't meet the requirements of the Road Traffic Act so in the eyes of the law you'd be driving without insurance.

sean_30

I can't agree with that, we live in a globalized world and a lot of these companies are truly global(zurich,axa, so on). The insurance policies are usually underwritten by only few companies so therefore they control the market and can introduce these policies if they wanted to.

tberry6686

sean_30 wrote: »

I can't agree with that, we live in a globalized world and a lot of these companies are truly global(zurich,axa, so on). The insurance policies are usually underwritten by only few companies so therefore they control the market and can introduce these policies if they wanted to.

So the Insurance companies can ignore the law ? It's the law that states the liabilities that must be covered not the insurance companies.

But yes they can introduce those policies but if you had one of them you would be driving without insurance as it would not meet RTA requirements.

Aretnap

Indeed. It doesn't matter that they're globalised companies - no responsible insurer is going to sell a UK customer a policy which doesn't meet the requirements of UK law, for reasons which ought to be blindingly obvious. And even if you could find a dodgy company willing to sell you an American style policy with a cap on third party injury liabilities, you'd just end up getting 6 points on your licence for driving without an RTA-compliant insurance policy.

Interesting fact: The need for very large amounts of cover is more than a legal nicety; after the Selby rail crash the responsible driver's insurers paid out over £22 million to third parties. That may be eclipsed by the Agnes Collier award.

Norman_Castle

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2011/09/birmingham-has-the-most-uninsured-drivers-265300/

Its a few years old but insurers will need a few years to re-asses an area, assuming it has improved.

dacouch

DUTR wrote: »

I live in Bham, fortunately not an inner city area, insurance bandings by postcode

If you're using your link to determine the rating area for your post code, bear in mind they're the Aviva rating areas for MOTORCYCLES from 2007. Apart from being very out of date as postcode rating for cars now tends to use the entire post code for car insurance. They bore very little resemblance to car insurance even when they were current as car insurance and motor cycle insurance are entirely different beasts