Daughters car insurance

meat_n2_reg

Hello
My daughter who is 20 has been driving for 1 year now and has 1 year NCB
Her car is only worth approx£500 a 1999 lupo
quotes fully comp = £750 , 3rd party fire & theft = £650

When I was younger always drove old bangers and only went for 3rd party fire & theft but that was a long time ago

Is it worth spending the extra £100 for fully comp on a £500 car ?

Cheers Steve

Aretnap

£500 for a 1999 Lupo sounds optimistic to be honest. I suspect she.'d be lucky if the insurer agreed with that valuation in the event of a write-off. Then deduct her excess fromwhatever valuation they do give her and she'll be left with a few brass farthings, if she's lucky.

Contrast that with the impact a claim would have on her future premiums and she'd almost certainly be better off not claiming in the event of an accident. Though of course if she causes damage to a third party then she may not have much choice about claiming and in that scenario she might as well pick up the brass farthings. It would still likely be less than a hundred quid though so its hard to see any scenario where she's be better off having paid for fully comp. Is just save the money and if necessary put it towards the next old banger myself.

Sparx

Depends, what is her excess? Need to check that as well. If the excess exceeds or is close to the value of the car, it may not be worth it.

However you have to remember with TPFT cover, if it was her fault, not only is her car not covered, any personal injuries she may sustain are not covered either. Fully Comp would also cover her own injuries (and the car) regardless of fault.

Personally regardless of the car's value - I would always go Fully Comp! Just for the personal injury cover and whatnot as well.

Also - it's not always the cheapest and best thing to buy an old banger car. The insurance risk does start to go up with older cars, as the safety rating (NCAP) and structure isn't as good as newer cars. So a car from 1999 is more prone structurally to more serious damage and injuries are more likely.

Aretnap

Sparx wrote: »

Fully Comp would also cover her own injuries (and the car) regardless of fault..

Erm... no it wouldn't. Some policies might offer a very limited amount of cover for very serious injuries (maybe a grand if she loses a limb, that sort of amount) just so that the insurer can put "personal injury cover included" in its adverts, but no mainstream car insurance policy offers an amount of injury cover for the policyholder which comes close to offering adequate recompense for serious injuries. (For that she'd need a separate critical illness or income protection policy which would cover a wide range of illnesses and injuries, not just car related ones.) And as for minor injuries, there's no cover at all - no insurer is going to sell her a policy which would allow her to drive into a wall and then claim a couple of grand for whiplash from her own policy.

So basically the personal injury aspect of a comprehensive policy either doesn't exist at all, or else it's barely worth having and certainly not worth paying any significant amount of money for.

meat_n2_reg

Many thanks for the replies

XS on comp was £100 & XS on 3rd party fire & theft £150

Checked the comp personal injury cover and hardly covered anything <5k max claim for loss of limb

So have gone for 3rd party fire and theft and with saving bought break down cover

Cheers

Trentenders

How about going fully comp with a large voluntary excess? It tends to be the case that more often than not it would be cheaper than TPFT (with no downside).