Changing car halfway through policy. Can I move insurers if their price is too high?

AndyLGR

I pay my car insurance monthly.

But I am changing my car soon and I am half way through a policy. But what if the price that my current insurer quotes for the new car is more than competitors.

Can I cancel my current policy and take out another?

By paying monthly do I have have to pay up the full term of my current policy before I can move?

Retrogamer

You can cancel your insurance and move to another company for sure, but some companies will take payment for the remainder of the year and others won't. You'd need to check with yours to see what their policy is.

They will likely have a cancellation fee at the least.
You will keep any NCB you accumulated before the policy started but if you change providers before this term completes, then you lost the pro rata amount from this year.

Quentin

Before buying your chosen car check that your present insurer is prepared to cover the replacement.

If not then you would need to factor in the cost of cancellation of your policy, as well as the cost of a brand-new policy elsewhere

Aretnap

You don't actually pay monthly for your insurance (unless you have one of a small number of genuine month by month policies). What you almost certainly do instead is take out a loan which allows you to pay for a year's insurance up front, then pay off the loan monthly. So if you cancel the insurance, you still have to pay off the loan. And while you will usually get some money back from the insurer if you cancel mid-term, depending on the terms and conditions of your own policy it might be quite a bit less than half of the up front price - so you still end up owing money once you've used the refund to pay off part of the remaining loan.

So yes you could well end up out of pocket by cancelling. Obviously that has to be weighed against any saving you'd make by insuring the new car with a different company. Or if you don't have your heart set on a particular type of car you could try to choose one for which your current insurer is reasonably competitive, and not have to worry about cancelling and moving.