Excess strange occurance in car insurance

t8769

When I put in £250 excess, for my car insurance quotes, the cost was often higher than £100.

So when I volunteered to pay more after a claim the quote was higher than when I offere to pay less!!!

Strange

Sandtree

t8769 said:

When I put in £250 excess, for my car insurance quotes, the cost was often higher than £100.

So when I volunteered to pay more after a claim the quote was higher than when I offere to pay less!!!

Strange

Its a rating factor like any other, insurers look (statistically) at the sort of person that chooses each excess level and the claims experience they have with them. Cannot say the analysis I've ever seen showed anything special at £250 but people choosing £750 excesses and other high numbers were typically bad drivers which is why they are selecting a high excess to try and bring their premiums down. As such the negative selection means it has the inverse impact... its similar to all the small hatchbacks that teenagers flock to, they can be more expensive to insurer that a much larger, more powerful and more expensive car for that reason.

Last time I was car buying a brand new 1.6l Mini was more expensive to insurer than a brand new 4.7l Mercedes 

Grumpy_chap

Sandtree said:

Its a rating factor like any other, insurers look (statistically) at the sort of person that chooses each excess level and the claims experience they have with them. Cannot say the analysis I've ever seen showed anything special at £250 but people choosing £750 excesses and other high numbers were typically bad drivers which is why they are selecting a high excess to try and bring their premiums down. As such the negative selection means it has the inverse impact..

That's interesting.

I always select a high excess as I don't want to be faffed involving the insurance and their admin in the event of a minor claim that I can just pay and get fixed quicker, easier, simpler.  In fact, I always slide to the highest excess the meerkat allows just for this simplicity.

You seem to be suggesting that may not be best route.

Sandtree

Grumpy_chap said:

Sandtree said:

Its a rating factor like any other, insurers look (statistically) at the sort of person that chooses each excess level and the claims experience they have with them. Cannot say the analysis I've ever seen showed anything special at £250 but people choosing £750 excesses and other high numbers were typically bad drivers which is why they are selecting a high excess to try and bring their premiums down. As such the negative selection means it has the inverse impact..

That's interesting.

I always select a high excess as I don't want to be faffed involving the insurance and their admin in the event of a minor claim that I can just pay and get fixed quicker, easier, simpler.  In fact, I always slide to the highest excess the meerkat allows just for this simplicity.

You seem to be suggesting that may not be best route.

It may not be... rating engines get ever more complex and so whats true for one branch of the algorithm isnt automatically true for every branch but its certainly worth double checking next time.

The other issue with going for very high excesses is that not all insurers offer them and so even if its not a major rating factor for you you will still be selecting from a smaller pool of options than with a more moderate excess.

Whilst a high excess means you cannot claim for a minor prang a low excess doesnt mean you automatically do claim for such an incident. Similarly just under half of claims costs are in relation to third partys and naturally no excess applies in these circumstances so big excess or small excess if you've caused £5k of injury to someone the insurer's bill is £5k

biscan25

Was it Aviva by any chance. I got a ridiculous discount (about 25%) for going zero excess after the comparison website stage. Ended up paying less than £150 for a insurance group 32 car in London.

Sandtree

biscan25 said:

Ended up paying less than £150 for a insurance group 32 car in London.

Insurers dont normally use car groups... my Group 50 car was cheaper to insure than a group 26 car... one is middle aged, middle management type car and the other is one that teenagers like and some can afford which is why the lower car has worse claims experience and so higher premiums despite the Thatcham groupings.