Car insurance - Voluntary Excess

Sianie

Hi!

I'm sorry if I'm posting in the wrong place, its my first time here and couldn't find anywhere else.

Its that dreaded car insurance time and I just have a quick question.

I always thought if you dropped your Voluntary Excess down to £0 the quote would go up quite a bit. However, its only gone up 32p a month.

Is this normal? Was I wrong in the first place?

TIA

redux

It does seem a bit surprising, but maybe it's a low insurance group car or they count you as a good risk.

But just check whether the compulsory excess is automatically adjusting as well, for example I did one quote which had these options amongst others.

voluntary £0 compulsory £85
voluntary £50 compulsory £25
voluntary £100 compulsory £0

I concluded there was no point in having £0 voluntary on that one.

However the premiums might drop off more if you go to £250 voluntary or a bit more.

InsideInsurance

If you plot premium against excess you normally get a roughly U shaped line in that the cheapest premium will come out with a mid level excess and both reducing it or increasing it from there will generate a higher premium.

Its normal for the premium to go up on a zero excess, how much it will go up depends on many other factors.

You also have to ask yourself, what sort of people actually want an excess of £X? You'll find the sub prime risks are the people that tend to ask for really high excess in the hope it'll lower their premium hence it actually increases it. Maybe you'd find its older people who remember the good old days of policies rarely having an excess that are all selecting £0 and generally these are good risks hence the minimal price increase.

arcon5

Depends what policy it is also I suppose. A fully comp excess will mean more than an excess on a TPF&T policy

Stoke

Mine went up by £14 when I reduced it from £250 to £0. Laughing

InsideInsurance

Stoke wrote: »

Mine went up by £14 when I reduced it from £250 to £0. Laughing

Why laughing?

Odds are you wont make a claim and so its simply cost you £14 more to insure your car this year.

Stoke

InsideInsurance wrote: »

Why laughing?

Odds are you wont make a claim and so its simply cost you £14 more to insure your car this year.

Yes, but if I do make a claim, I'll save a significant amount. It's a safe buffer and I'm happy to take it.