Where can I find cheap insurance, then get a car to fit it?

Prothet_of_Doom

I found that juggling the excess, on one comparion website made no difference from 100 to 500, but put in 550 and I saw a reduction of £50.

InsideInsurance

perrybond wrote: »

These are not variables. These are constants; they remain the same for me, no matter what car I buy. - My postcode won't change depending upon what car I buy.

The car information (except age) is constant by car spec. (assuming no modifications.) - A car that has expensive spares is a fact, not a variable.

Perhaps I explained myself badly.
I can give an insurance company my details, turning many of the variables into constants. With that information, someone could say a
For a manual petrol car that a
2005 Citroen C1 1.0 Rhythm is cheaper than a 2008 Nisson Pixo 1.0 (or visa versa). then just run the same information through all the group 1 cars and sort them cheapest first.

I understand that perhaps no one will do this, but I bulk at the concept it is impossible.

Many insurers dont use the ABI groups and even if they do there are hundreds of vehicles that fit into each group. Ignoring that there is the much more practical issue, their systems arent designed to allow this type of query to be run and so the only way it can be done is by some poor person having to manually run through each vehicle that you can think of and bring back the rates for it but then you have to repeat that over the phone with every insurer and broker you want to try - you will probably find differences between each one on which model of car is actually the cheapest.

You can in theory partially do this yourself by going online and doing quotes on an Aggregator like Confused.com and going back and changing the vehicle each time (they allow you to choose "dont know registration" and then manually select the vehicle.)

The only issue with doing the above is the fact that many insurer will stop quoting or start loading premiums after a certain number of virtually identical quotes because of concerns of either attempted fraud or rate raiding (competitors trying to work out their pricing). So to do it you really need to be slightly altering the key details (address, dob, name) after every couple too but some may also be using IP address which is harder to change enough times

perrybond

Fair enough - I do listen!
I've been off looking at cars, starting with group 1 cars, but understanding, thaks to all the replys, that they may not be the cheapest, but I have to start somewhere. Coming out on top for me at present is the Citroen C1, no real idea why.

Aretnap

Another factor to consider - the cost of insuring your daughter to drive the car will change when she passes her test, and will probably get significantly more expensive. This sounds counter-intuitive until you consider that before she passes she'll have you in the car saying "slow down, watch out for those pedestrians" but after she passes she might have several friends in the car saying "how fast does this go then?" Get quotes for both a learner and a newly qualified additional driver before you choose.

JimmyTheWig

Bantex wrote: »

Nothing to stop you doing that yourself using a comparison site.
Enter your details and then try different cars. Failing to see the problem here.

The problem is that that only gives the OP results on a few different cars. If they want to test lots of cars then they need to do the search lots of times.

For most people, they know what car they have. But they don't know what company to insure with. So they use a comparison site to search all the companies.
They could do this without a comparison site. That's what I had to do when I first had my own car. I'd get the Yellow Pages out and phone a range of different companies. It was perfectly possible. Just like your suggestion for the OP here it is perfectly possible.
But it is easier for me now to put the details into a comparison site once and let it contact the different companies.
Just like it would be easier for the OP to say he wanted the search run against all cars.
If there was such a comparison site the OP could put in all his details and then search for all cars. That would be quicker than the OP searching half a dozen times for different cars and would be better than the OP searching half a dozen times for different cars as the cheapest may not be one of the 6 he first thought of.

I accept that no such site exists, but froma technical point of view it could exist, if you could narrow down the list of cars (and options) to a manageable number.
I appreciate what InsideInsurance is saying, though, that insurance companies wouldn't play ball.

InsideInsurance

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

I accept that no such site exists, but froma technical point of view it could exist, if you could narrow down the list of cars (and options) to a manageable number.
I appreciate what InsideInsurance is saying, though, that insurance companies wouldn't play ball.

Depending on the complexity of the rating engine it would be exceptionally simple.

With my last Motor client (a few years ago now admittedly) you simply had 2 tables that you'd need to expose, the first was a list of every make, model, variant and mapped to a group code (not the ABI ones). The second was the group code to rating factor (a simple number that you times the premium by - so 1 has no effect, >1 increases and <1 reduces).

Wouldnt be hard to identify the group with the lowest factor and then identify every make/model/variant that is in that group.

In theory with processing power getting ever cheaper the rating engines can get forever more powerful and so some have talked about more complex compound effects where you dont just consider each element individually as this does but actually think that the "hot hatch with real performance" is really bad in anyones hands where as "luxury convertible with moderate performance" actually is ok in the hands of middlaged people but you dont want youngsters or newly qualified drivers.

How far this has gone in practice is another matter. The same company was having a lot of arguments between underwriting and pricing on how accurate you can really get and given the standard deviations involved actually simple and easy is possibly overall better.


All that said and done, insurers dont want other insurers to know their rates or how their rating engine works otherwise they could easily be outpriced etc and so we wont see these types of sites appear unless a broker or independent party is willing to do the research and publish the results with the insurers themselves remaining anonymous

Herzlos

I suspect such an approach, with a comparison pointing out the cheapest car to insure at the time will be largely self defeating; it'll be the same car for most people, so demand for that model would rocket driving the price up and the accident rate, thus knocking it off the top of the list to be replaced by a new one which everyone wants and so on.

redux

If this is an entirely new policy - which it sounds like - it will be worth talking to your current and a couple of other insurers about whether they can mirror your current no claims bonus on to a new policy.

I found that they were willing to do so for me, as long as they had both policies. (In the end though I have just one policy and may swap it to the old car when I need to use it.)

I'm not talking about insurers that make a big promotional play about multi-car insurance, as in my experience their quotes for a single car were about twice as much as I'm paying now.

InsideInsurance

Herzlos wrote: »

I suspect such an approach, with a comparison pointing out the cheapest car to insure at the time will be largely self defeating; it'll be the same car for most people, so demand for that model would rocket driving the price up and the accident rate, thus knocking it off the top of the list to be replaced by a new one which everyone wants and so on.

Ultimately yes, insurers review their prices all the time.

Citroen Saxos used to be dirt cheap to insure as it was an uncool brand only used by old women. Then Citroen did a deal that anything below a VTS came with 2 years free insurance for anyone with a full license and the VTS could be had with the same as long as you were 21.

It was a very bad deal that burnt Direct Line very badly if industry rumours are correct. The cost to insurer a Saxo went up massively after that because suddenly you had many in the hands of youngsters and the after market industry had also spotted the trend making things to make saxos cooler and so thus increasing the attractiveness to youngsters

perrybond

Just fed in a Citroen C1 to go compare

Fully comp. Wife and I : £140
add daughter : £700
Move to 3rd party fire and theft £680
Try 3rd party only: £1100 !