Car Insurance at 17

Pinky9

Can anyone help me with advice of a good (cheap) Insurance company to insure my son for the first time - he's having extortionate quotes and is prepared to pay a £500 excess - even this doesn't seem to help!

Any advice will be gratefully received.

Thanks

Pinky9

nearlyrich

I can only sympathise, my son paid almost £1500 last year,:eek:the good news is that the renewal is approx half. Take a look at www.confused.com

maclean2

Unfortunately cheap and 17 years old for insurance don't go together ! You are likely to be in for a minimum of over £1000.00 and here are a few suggestions to keep the price down :-

Keep the engine size small - 1 litre of less.
Include mature female relations as additional drivers.
Take the pass plus certificate covering night/motorway/bad weather driving/this will cost around £100.00 but can reduce the price by 30.0%.
Norwich Union Direct offer good pass plus discounts and also a a years NCD after nine months.Ask them for all the details.Other firms may not recognize NCD earned on this 9 months basis so check this out.Norwich Union Direct offer the 6 extra lessons needed for pass plus at £99.00.
Quotelinedirect offer pass plus discounts but will also arrange 6 month policies with a years NCD at the end of 6 months.You will need to ring them.Other companies may not recognize the discount but it is still worth looking into because it spreads the financial load.

Worth checking with Tesco/Direct Line/Privilege butyou will need to ring them as they don't offer pass plus discounts online.

Best of luck.

benz

I had the same problem when my daughter reached 17, 3 years ago. The quote from my local broker was £740. A friend suggested trying the Co-op. (Co-operative Insurance or CIS) The quote is all done online and their premium was £240, saving me a cool £500!

I realise that boys are more expensive than girls to insure, but it could be worth a few minutes of your time online.

maclean2

benz wrote:

I had the same problem when my daughter reached 17, 3 years ago. The quote from my local broker was £740. A friend suggested trying the Co-op. (Co-operative Insurance or CIS) The quote is all done online and their premium was £240, saving me a cool £500!

I realise that boys are more expensive than girls to insure, but it could be worth a few minutes of your time online.

Bad news about CIS.Unfortunately they have upped their prices considerably and will want around 2K.

Iona_Penny

Rang lots of places to get a quote for 17yr old son to drive a 10yr old metro 3rd party; they ranged from £1200 - £2400 ! The cheapest was Norwich Union Direct (already mentioned by maclean ) and with pass plus this became £660. It seems huge to me but at least he can manage it. Hopefully it will drop on renewal and he is already starting to get no claims in his own name. Good luck

trafalgar_2

Pinky9 wrote:

Can anyone help me with advice of a good (cheap) Insurance company to insure my son for the first time - he's having extortionate quotes and is prepared to pay a £500 excess - even this doesn't seem to help!

Any advice will be gratefully received.

Thanks

Pinky9

I put my son on my insurance.........much cheaper

maclean2

To insure in father/mothers name may be "much cheaper" but there are several negatives to this :-

1- unless the young driver is declared as the main driver the insurance company may refuse to pay the claim once they investigate and find out who drives the car most.Their sleuths will check all the paperwork and who actually paid for the car and may even ask the neighbours who they have seen driving it.
2- pass plus discount is only available to a young driver insuring in his/her own name so does not apply for a policy in a parents name
3- the young driver does not earn his own NCD if the insurance is taken out by a parent and if you have 3 or 4 years NCD by the time you are 21 the premiums sink to a fraction of what you would pay with no NCD

zzzLazyDaisy

Deleted, sorry, posted on wrong thread by mistake

Pinky9

Thanks to all of you for you advice. It seems that £1300 is in essence quite cheap unless he takes pass+ which he does intend to do anyway.

I do understand that at 17 he is a huge risk for insurance companies, but it does seem rediculous that it is going to cost nearly 3 times what the car has cost him!

Will definitely add my name as an additional driver as this did bring down the cost with several companies by over £100. It's just so difficult for teenagers these days, he's only an apprentice mechanic and earns £400 per month whilst he trains - it seems the bulk of this will go on insuring the car and he'll have little left for petrol to go out in it!

Pinky9

coolcam7

At 17 I managed to get insured for around £350 with Asda car insurance for a small 1.4 engine car. I found the cheapest price by going to autotrader.co.uk, might be worth a try for your son too?