Adding newly qualified driver - premium increased more than £400 in one month!

Squeaks78

I have Multi Car Insurance with Admiral which is due to renew in mid Jan. 2021.  
My daughter (17 years old) just passed the test and I wanted to add her onto one of my car policies.  I was quoted nearly £600 to cover her from today until mid January 2021.  The very odd thing is that I bought the same insurance one month ago for her when she had the first driving test. ( I was very optimistic and too organised by sorting out her insurance coverage in advance).  I paid insurance premium of £193 to cover her up to the renewal date under the exactly same conditions, but had to cancel this as she failed the test! The refund less administration charge was made immediately and I leant the lesson not to cover her until she actually passed the test.  So I was so shocked to find out that I now need to pay £600.  The explanation I was given by the company was due to "the day to day rating factors".  
I am now considering to cancel my existing multi car insurance with them and find a new insurance company to cover us all immediately.  Do you think it is a good idea?  Any suggestions will be very much appreciated!

NottinghamKnight

Anecdotally in my opinion it seems comparatively cheap to insure a learner driver but very expensive to insure a young driver who has passed their test.
It's certainly worth shopping around, but I'd do that before cancelling your current insurance, it may be that your current deal is competitive.  

Car_54

It is a fact of life that insurance premiums for newly-qualified drivers are much higher than for learners.

New young drivers are very high risk. Learners accompanied by a mature adult are not.

If you expect to make a significant saving you may well be disappointed, especially considering the cancellation costs.

comeandgo

As car54 said, a learner driver is under instruction but a young newly qualified driver, very high risk.

photome

Squeaks78 said:

I have Multi Car Insurance with Admiral which is due to renew in mid Jan. 2021.  
My daughter (17 years old) just passed the test and I wanted to add her onto one of my car policies.  I was quoted nearly £600 to cover her from today until mid January 2021.  The very odd thing is that I bought the same insurance one month ago for her when she had the first driving test. ( I was very optimistic and too organised by sorting out her insurance coverage in advance).  I paid insurance premium of £193 to cover her up to the renewal date under the exactly same conditions, but had to cancel this as she failed the test! The refund less administration charge was made immediately and I leant the lesson not to cover her until she actually passed the test.  So I was so shocked to find out that I now need to pay £600.  The explanation I was given by the company was due to "the day to day rating factors".  
I am now considering to cancel my existing multi car insurance with them and find a new insurance company to cover us all immediately.  Do you think it is a good idea?  Any suggestions will be very much appreciated!

Where they the exact same conditions?

The £193 was when she was a learner
the £600 was as a newly qualified driver

At least that’s how I read it. 

£600 does seem a lot to have her as a named driver 3 months. Depends on the car and where you live tho

Sandtree

Ok I think I have read your post differently to others....

You thought you she would pass her test so got a price to add her to your insurance if she passed and was quoted £193 but she failed so you didnt add her
A short time later she took the test again and this time she did pass and when speaking to your insurers this time it added £600 for the remainder of the policy and given its a month or so later its now proportionally even more.

Other's comments are correct in that adding a learner driver is much cheaper than adding a newly qualified driver but I believe in both scenarios you had a newly qualified driver being added?

The unknown here is if the original price was based on her actually passing or not, my guess would be that it wasnt ie she still had a provisional which was the status at point of quote. Ultimately price is currently seen as a commercial decision which insurers review frequently (in my day it was fortnightly by real people and by the hour by IT systems) and so it could be simply be a move against newly qualified drivers but more likely a missunderstanding.

Squeaks78

Thanks for all your replies.  The £193 was the insurance charge on the condition she passed the test and I let them know that she passed it on that date.  So it was the insurance charge for a newly qualified young driver.  I already had the Veygo learner insurance, so I didn't need another learner insurance at that time.

Sandtree

Squeaks78 said:

Thanks for all your replies.  The £193 was the insurance charge on the condition she passed the test and I let them know that she passed it on that date.  So it was the insurance charge for a newly qualified young driver.  I already had the Veygo learner insurance, so I didn't need another learner insurance at that time.

Insurers dont deal with "on the condition that" generally unless they are setting the condition hence the idea they have priced it on the wrong idea... but ultimately pricing is fairly unregulated so they can charge what they want and you take it or leave it... your price is only guaranteed until the end of the policy if nothing changes

[Deleted User]

Sounds about right, mid policy changes are always more expensive, they put an admin fee on for changing it and tend to charge more than a fresh quote because they've got you trapped, I've noticed that whenever I've done address changes, the total for the year always ends up exceeding a fresh quote.

Cancelling isn't without it's charges as well, many will charge a fee to cancel a policy (except during cooling off period), just do the maths for cancel and fresh quote vs staying with the same insurer. Also bear in mind the 3 weeks in advance rule for fresh quotes to get the best price and factor all that in.

angrycrow

Insurers like to take advantage of necessity. Get a quote for an amendment in three weeks time and then get a quote for the same amendment tomorrow. I suspect you will find the the price for amending tomorrow is around triple the price to do it in three weeks. They know you can beat the price with a bit of time to shop around.
It's why as soon as my renewal lands I get comparative quotes. I then sit on them for 3 weeks before calling my current insurer and asking them to match the lowest like for like quote. The last renewal saw £80 knocked off last year's price. 

Squeaks78

Thanks for all the comments and advice.  I have been doing lot of researches.  It looks like the insurance premium goes up by 10 times by adding my daughter - from £269 p.a. for just covering my husband and myself to £2700 p.a. when added my daughter.  The £2700 was the one of the cheapest.  The highest premium was £95,568!!!

Maybe I just buy her a bicycle.