Car insurance for over 85...prices shot up?

malcolmK

Greetings,
Has anyone else noticed that the price for car insurance has shot up? Last year it was £437 but the cheapest I can find after trying all the comparison sites and some direct ones (those who actually gave a quote) is over £750.

Everything is the same as before, except a year older where appropriate.

I can try some other techniques to help reduce but at the base level has anyone else noticed this big jump in prices and any tangible reason for it, save being 86 rather than 85 years old?

paddyandstumpy

Alot of the market drop out after 85, so choice is far less.

If you've done a comprehensive review of the market and followed the advice to bring the cost down, then the prices quoted are now the new market norm for that age.

malcolmK

Thanks for the reply, I suspected as much.

Clearly I have been playing with the quote parameters, excess, mileage etc. and one that is beyond my simple understanding is the length of ownership.

It is a 10 year old car but with all other items being the same , If i have length of ownership as 7 instead of the actual 3, the premium drops from c. £730 to £550. About a 25% drop.

I even queried this with the insurance company but the best the person there could come up with was that I would be more familiar with the car. I suspect this was not a well considered answer.

It is just a hypothetical situation but just wondered if anyone knows why the length of ownership appears to be such a significant factor.

System

malcolmK wrote: »

It is just a hypothetical situation but just wondered if anyone knows why the length of ownership appears to be such a significant factor.

Unfamiliarity with a newly-acquired automatic seems to be a major factor in the spate of accidents caused by older drivers.

paddyandstumpy

The person you spoke to would just be a customer services agent, I doubt they are interested in the inner workings of the insurer or how they calculate prices.

To answer your question, it's a pricing factor quite simply because the actuaries for that insurer have proven a correlation between length of car ownership and claims performance.

You can try and second guess the reason for this correlation, but ultimately numbers and performance talks with insurers, and they've decided this is linked.

Honestly, it'll take someone with far more intelligence than myself to translate some of these type of correlations into common sense! They may not make sense, but if they are linked to how much it costs the insurer, they will price on it.

ThinkingOutLoud_2

As said insurers have automated software that analyses their data for any kind of trend. In the past it required humans insight to think of a possible risk factor or trend and then see if the stats matched up.

The net result is they have ratings factors which are not always understood by even the actuary when found, but can be proven.

Despite this it is also true that age is something that many insurer treat in large lumps - often banding their rating in 5 years or more. So often when you hit over 70, 75, 80 and 85 ... there is a sharp leap.

I reckon however that the assertion about an older car being more familiar to you with less features and perhaps no new power /acceleration has merit. It is a fact that learning new things is harder as we age.

It feels unfair, but it is likely to be about statistical risk and is not "personal" but feels like it.

The trick is to try every insurer in case one has not found or applied that factor.

malcolmK

Thanks for all the replies. I guess it is just one of those unintuitive (well, intuative but not to the extended expected) aspects of car insurance quotes.

It does seem a relatively unknown element but I guess I should bear it in mind the next time I go mad and toy with getting a new (to me) car.