Brand new car - value to insure it for?

pinkteapot

Probably a REALLY stupid question but this will be the first time I've had a new car - I've only bought second hand before.

When getting car insurance I normally put down the replacement cost as the value. Eg our outgoing Mondeo is currently insured as £5k because that's what it'd cost to buy a like-for-like replacement at the mo.

When you're insuring a new car, do you put down the full cost of it? Ie what we're paying for it? Or a bit less because as soon as it's driven off the forecourt it'll be worth thousands less to replace with a not-brand-new equivalent....

Alter_ego

All a bit acedemic really, insurer will only pay the book value anyway. Not even sure if they use the value to calculate premium. I only ever bought one new car and put the price I paid - £600
It was a long time ago!!

missile

Put the value at whatever you paid.

Many insurers will supply a replacement vehicle in the first twelve months. Well worth checking if yours will? If not, consider changing.

Enjoy your new car :-)

pinkteapot

missile wrote: »

Put the value at whatever you paid.

Many insurers will supply a replacement vehicle in the first twelve months. Well worth checking if yours will? If not, consider changing.

Enjoy your new car :-)

Thanks. Good tip re checking the policy for what they do in the first 12 months - we'll do that!

pinkteapot

Oh, honestly. The car we're trading in is insured with Admiral. We were planning on doing a few quotes to get a sense of the new car's insurance price, but probably just doing a change of car on our existing Admiral policy (assuming their price was reasonable).

Turns out that Admiral are one of few insurers who DON'T offer the new car replacement feature you mentioned. Advice online says if you insure with Admiral, buy gap insurance too. We'll have to price up Admiral + gap insurance vs insuring with someone else.

Shame - we've had a claim with Admiral and they were great - it was totally hassle-free.

mattk_180

Value is going to be the price you have to pay to buy another one, not how much it is to sell yours. In your case, the value to buy another brand new one is, of course, going to be what you've just paid for it.


On second thoughts, it might even be higher than what you paid, it would be the list price as to buy it again you perhaps wouldn't be able to get any discounts they've given you this time round and of course the part exchange if you have done.


Regarding GAP cover should you choose to stay with Admiral, I would suggest going through a broker for this. Will be about the third of the price than the dealer offers it to you at and you can usually purchase this for less than £200 for 3 years of cover.

pinkteapot

mattk_180 wrote: »

Regarding GAP cover should you choose to stay with Admiral, I would suggest going through a broker for this. Will be about the third of the price than the dealer offers it to you at and you can usually purchase this for less than £200 for 3 years of cover.

Yep - already told the dealer we weren't interested (this was just my default reaction to any financial product being sold by a car dealer - didn't even ask what it was!).

Googling tells me that ALA and gapinsurance.co.uk both seem recommended, are both Defaqto 5* and quoted £149 and £137 respectively for a three year policy, to cover the gap back to the invoice price we're paying. Could pay a bit more for the full replacement value (given that the list price will increase). A one year gap policy is around £80.

Also looks like fewer insurers offer new car replacement as standard now so it may not be that all of Admiral's competitors offer it. We'll do a few quote when we've got the reg no. and see who includes it and who doesn't, and factor in the gap cover on top where necessary.

Glad I asked my original daft question now!

rs65

Who have you found that doesn't offer replacement car? I thought only admiral didn't, and maybe some based outside UK.

CKhalvashi

pinkteapot wrote: »

Yep - already told the dealer we weren't interested (this was just my default reaction to any financial product being sold by a car dealer - didn't even ask what it was!).

Googling tells me that ALA and gapinsurance.co.uk both seem recommended, are both Defaqto 5* and quoted £149 and £137 respectively for a three year policy, to cover the gap back to the invoice price we're paying. Could pay a bit more for the full replacement value (given that the list price will increase). A one year gap policy is around £80.

Also looks like fewer insurers offer new car replacement as standard now so it may not be that all of Admiral's competitors offer it. We'll do a few quote when we've got the reg no. and see who includes it and who doesn't, and factor in the gap cover on top where necessary.

Glad I asked my original daft question now!

Not bad!

Less than £1 a week to be able to stay with an insurer you're happy with, whilst insuring against any risk is a good deal IMO.

csgohan4

make sure you read the T +Cs and ensure it is an established company. Those linked to Enterprise have now folded and people have lost their money


I got a 5 year gap insurance for 213 pounds to cover a new car.

pinkteapot

CKhalvashi wrote: »

Not bad!

Less than £1 a week to be able to stay with an insurer you're happy with, whilst insuring against any risk is a good deal IMO.

Yep! Thinking about it over the weekend, we're going to go for a 3 year gap policy. We like that if we had a write-off (it won't get stolen - it's a Skoda. :rotfl:), we could have a new car again instead of having to buy a nearly-new second hand. I've bought nearly-new cars before and you always wonder why the first owner got rid of it after such a short period of time...

My mum's a recently retired insurance underwriter and her first reaction was skepticism, but she's read all the policy wordings over the weekend (she enjoys it!!) and thinks ALA look decent. In fact, she's now considering getting a policy for the new car she's got on order! She'd only had dealer quotes for gap policies before at ludicrous prices - she didn't realise how little you could get it for.

I know this insurance is dirt cheap for the amount of cover because so few people end up claiming on it. But I see the result of that as not spending very much for a bit of peace of mind. List price of our new car is £28k which is a significant amount to us - not something we can self-insure easily - so I think we'll do it.

I do like Admiral. We had a claim earlier this year when I *ahem* hit a stationary bus and scraped the entire side of my car. Every panel along one side needed replacing. Admiral were brilliant - sent me details of which garage to take it to straight away and they one they'd chosen is a top bodyshop in our town - a Porsche specialist (!!). I've only taken cars to cheap bodyshops before and have always been able to spot the colour difference in the replaced panel if I squint hard enough. The place Admiral sent us to were amazing and you wouldn't know the work had been done.

Got the reg for the new car at the weekend so we've done quotes for other insurers. Job this week is to phone Admiral and get a quote to do a change of car. We've worked out what would be a reasonable amount to pay them, based on what we've already paid for the policy and a pro-rata amount of the quotes from other insurers. :money: