First time insurance, aged 24.

lemonstar

Daughter starts work as a junior doctor end of July - it's not taken us long to find out that doctors are rated as high risk (and hence expensive) because of accidents driving back late at night after long hours. My daughter is using the usual comparison sites is struggling to find anything under £1600 atm for a 1.2L insurance group 5 Skoda - she tried our local broker - £3,900 with £3000 excess! Are we not likely to get anything much better - is it worth looking at companies not on the main comparison sites or not? So far we have a choice between Admiral (with or without the black box), Elephant and Diamond - I checked on the defaqto site and all are 5-star rated - anyone know of any reason to go with or not go with one of those? (i.e. good or bad personal experience).
On what little we have gathered we want to avoid the black box/telematics.

wongataa

Admiral, Elephant, and Diamond are all the same company. Ist time insurance is usually expensive and you have to hope that the driver gets through the first year with no incidents and so starts accruing a NCB and experience to bring the costs down.

I've been with Admiral (when it was the best deal for me) and had no issues. It is worth looking at Direct Line and Aviva as they are not on the comparison sites. The more quotes the better really.

wgl2014

Does she qualify for the NHS lease scheme? Could be worth considering this for a couple of years until she has built up some no claims.

Turn_to_Grey

Did you run quotes in just her name ? Maybe worth adding an experienced second driver to a quote, it may bring it down a little.

takman

lemonstar wrote: »

My daughter is using the usual comparison sites is struggling to find anything under £1600 atm for a 1.2L insurance group 5 Skoda

Just to add a small car with a small engine and low insurance group does not mean it will be cheap insurance because these cars are popular with younger drivers.

For example when someone i know what looking for quotes for their first car the 1.1L Peugeot 106 was a few hundred pounds more to insure than a 1.6L Peugeot 106.

flashg67

Worth opening up the choice of car if you can and do a cost on different models/trim/engine sizes.

Shopping for my SD recently surprised me - eg I'd have thought a Nissan Micra was comparable to, say, a Citroen C2, but the C2 was £2-300 cheaper.

Add Mum & dad too if they have good driving records - this should make a big difference.

Bite the bullet for couple of years and hope she doesn't have an accident (or at least one that causes damage to a 3rd party)

lemonstar

wgl2014 wrote: »

Does she qualify for the NHS lease scheme? Could be worth considering this for a couple of years until she has built up some no claims.

She/we haven't heard of that.

System

takman wrote: »

Just to add a small car with a small engine and low insurance group does not mean it will be cheap insurance because these cars are popular with younger drivers.

This. My 19 year old son was paying £1200 for a 1.2L Ford Fiesta. He blew the engine up and as he had a child on the way started looking at larger cars. He found a 2 litre Ford Mondeo Estate but didn't think he'd be able to get it insured. Turned out it was only going to be £700 which was a saving of £500 on his 1.2L Fester.

wgl2014

lemonstar wrote: »

She/we haven't heard of that.

Basically a lease with insurance and servicing included so a fixed monthly outgoing.

http://www.nhsfleetsolutions.co.uk/offers-1/vauxhall-corsa-14-ecoflex-sri-5dr.aspx for example.

Worth checking out.

forgotmyname

1.2 Skoda. You chose the wrong car.

When my little one passed her test, sub 1000cc cars were the cheapest. At the time she didnt need/want a car so waited.
Almost 2 years later she wanted a car and 1300cc engined cars were now cheaper than the sub 1000cc ones.

First years cover to use was more about the price than whether the company was rated at 5 stars or not. Diamond were the cheapest and even cheaper for a 10 month bonus builder policy.