Multicar Insurance. Scam?

Nick2132

Really? This is where I’m not knowledgable enough about the industry hence the question. If that’s the case then fair enough but equally if so seems silly they don’t just say you have whatever NCD on both

iolanthe07

I have two cars both of which I drive regularly. I had no problem in being offered the full no claims discount when I bought the second car; the two together didn't amount to £400 fully comp. This was with Saga, but you have to be over a certain age, iirc.

Nick2132

Thanks I’ll check them out. Appreciate the response

System

Nick2132 wrote: »

Thanks for the response and I fully understand the points. That’s not really my issue. It was more the mirroring the no claims onto either Car. I have shopped around and can’t seem to find anyone who does this?

I had no problem at all. I automatically got quotes from insurance companies who I assume mirrored my main NCD when I did searches online selecting I owned another car and had insurance on it. The website then asked for the NCD on my main vehicle. Even though I selected no NCD on the MX5 I was getting quotes for I was getting quotes of £160 and under so those giving the low quotes were most definitely mirroring my NCD on my main car.

If it helps my current insurer on my MX5 is Churchill.

facade

Esure mirror the discount to the second (and third....) car if you have the first car insured with them.

rach_k

You may only drive one car at the time but you still want both cars insured, don't you? If you're driving Car A and somebody drives into Car B and writes it off, would you be happy if your insurance didn't cover Car B?

wwpaddler

Your DL points reflect your risk when driving. If you want to be insured when you're driving then they need to be accounted for in your premium.

Your NCD applies to the car. Your car is insured 24/7/365 not just when you're driving so can only be applied to one car.

If you want NCD on 2 cars then you need to earn it on 2 cars (or use a company that mirrors NCD / has decided it wants to insure people with this risk at a competitive premium).

The number of people who want insuring on 2 cars is a very small part of the overall car insurance market so not every company is going to set themselves up to competitively insure this niche.

forgotmyname

The way it seems to me is you have £100 to spend and goto the shop and want to leave with 2 items worth £100 each.

You cannot use the same £100 to buy 2 items.

Aretnap

No claims discount is a marketing gimmick - nothing more, nothing less.

Initially it was a form of loyalty bonus, designed to encourage your customers (especially the good ones who didn't make claims) to renew year after year, and the idea was that you'd only get it if you renewed with the same insurer. In short exactly the sort of thing that people who rant about how insurers take advantage of their loyal customers seem to be demanding.

However soon enough it went the way of all loyalty bonuses - insurers realised that if they wanted to attract customers from their rivals, they'd have to offer to match their rival's no claims bonuses. For much the same reasons Sainsbury's might offer to accept Tesco's money off vouchers from time to time - not because they're under any legal or moral obligation to accept them, but because it's a good way of poaching Tesco's customers.

But ultimately it's still a discount that is attached to a particular policy. And if you're not renewing a policy (either because you're insuring a car for the first time, or because you're buying a second car) then you don't have a current insurer offering you a discount - so there's no incentive for any other insurer to offer you a discount either. To push the supermarket analogy further, complaining that you can only use your NCD on one policy at a time is a bit like getting a "£10 off your next shop" voucher from Tesco, then complaining that you can't use it three times at three different supermarkets.

That's the theory anyway. In practice of course NCB has been rather uncomfortably crowbarred into the general risk-assessment model that insurers use. So if you're insuring a second car for yourself, and it genuinely is a second car for yourself and not a car for your teenage son, then if you shop around you may find an insurer willing to mirror your NCB on it or give you an equivalent discount. Not all insurers will do this however; the default position is still one NCB one policy. As mentioned already the number of people who own two cars is tiny as a proportion of the general population - many mass market insurers will have little or no interest in changing the setup of their systems to cater for a very small group of customers.

Perhaps it would be better all round if insurers scrapped the while system altogether. But the problem is that nowadays people treat their NCD as it was (a) the most valuable thing they've ever owned (you can even get insurance for it) and (b) a basic human right. So the first insurer to scrap it would immediately lose all their customers. But in fact it's neither a human right nor the most valuable thing you'll ever own - it's just a marketing gimmick that got out of hand.