Motor Insurance Address Change Just Before Renewal

larachantie

We are moving address just three weeks before our car insurance expires.  The cover for this period is just £13 but the fee for address change is approx £40 (plus / minus the change due to the new area of course) and the cancellation fee is approx £60.  Not big money and not yet had the renewal quote but it seems to be more cost effective to buy new insurance for the new address and not renew the current policy without changing the address (cost £40), or cancelling (£60 and not presumably minus £13). (Quotes so far show that the new price for the new area is roughly the same.)

Would this be OK or would it cause problems?  Obviously any claim would be on the new policy but I'd have the same car covered on two policies at the same time which may be seen as misleading / dodgy?

knightstyle

We were in a similar position and just got new insurance starting the day we moved, no problems at all.  Make sure your old insurance is not auto renew though.

Sandtree

Remember you cannot use an NCD on two policies at the same time and so your second policy that runs concurrently will have to be declared as 0 NCD.

It would cause problems in several remote scenarios 

knightstyle

Well we just put our 9 years NCB on the comparison site and all went well.  Perhaps it took a few weeks for the insurance company to check and by that time the old policy had run out?

GrumpyDil

I would be very careful. A lot of insurance companies seem to be able to check NCD automatically. It may be possible that they will come back with no NCD as your NCD is currently being used on another policy and then you could get into the realms of policy cancellation etc.
Is your insurance through a broker or direct as some companies with a direct policy seem to charge admin fees for telephone alterations but not if you can complete it online. 

Sandtree

knightstyle said:

Well we just put our 9 years NCB on the comparison site and all went well.  Perhaps it took a few weeks for the insurance company to check and by that time the old policy had run out?

They will be able to see the overlap though.

If you headover to the insurance forum you'll find someone now facing £5,000 premiums because they used the NCD on two vehicles and the insurer cancelled the policy as a consequence.

larachantie

Thanks all. The policy is direct and I suspect they will robotically / ruthlessly charge the £40 admin fee with no discretion if i just report an address change.  I was always taught that "risk" is a function of a) impact and b) likelihood. So the impact may be high even if the likelihood is low. Based on the comments it does seem that the risks outweigh the benefits so we won't try the two short term concurrent policy route.  I think our bet bet is to wait for the renewal and use the prospect of new business albeit at a new address as an incentive to waive the fee for the few weeks?

sheramber

Who is the insurance with?
I can make changes on my policy online with no admin fee.

PRAISETHESUN

I'd avoid having two policies for the same vehicle, particularly if they are with different insurers. In the event of a claim you will find that each policy will limit their liability to 50% of the value of the claim and you'll also have to pay 2 excesses - not the mention the headache that your current insurer will cause if they decide to not pay out because you didn't update your details with them. Probably best to just suck up the £40 and include it as a part of the cost of moving house.