Learner insurance

AndyPandy76

Bit of a long one sorry. 19 year old son bought car at 17 but covid hit just as he started lessons so he’s never actually got his test and is now away to uni and not overly interested at the moment. Now daughter has turned 17 and has started lessons so the plan would be for her to use his car and then when he decides to take it up again they can share the car.  So insurance, what’s the best way to do it. I thought it would be simple enough for me to take insurance on it and put them both on as learners then as each passed add them to policy. Price isn’t to bad for them as learners but when one passes it’s going up to £4000+ which seems nuts anyway has a chat to Adrian flux who I used before when son 1st got car and they can insure them both as learners with their own policy’s each however if both happen to pass they can’t insure 2 drivers under 25. Also they said  as son is owner of car he must have insurance on it to enable her to have a policy too. (Hope your still keeping up, my brain is fried now). So basically my question is what is the best way to work this does anyone have advice. My original idea was that myself and daughter would give son some money towards the car and it would be a shared car amongst the 3 of us but trying to insure it is a minefield! Any help and advice would be much appreciated.

Sandtree

The one thing you need to be careful with is ensuring that if you are the policyholder that you correctly declare who the main driver is as its presumably not going to be you. In days gone past most websites etc didnt allow you to do this and in the absence of a declaration its assumed the policyholder is the main driver. Getting a policy and falsely declaring (or failing to declare) that the mature adult is the main driver when in reality its one of the young learner drivers is termed as "fronting" and treated as fraud with all the consequences.

Someone will have to have a normal policy on the vehicle that could be you or your son, it could be an annual or a short term policy. Most insurers arent too concerned about close family policyholder/owner not matching but again kid owns car but parent is policyholder/main driver is a clear indicator of fronting.

For learners you have the choice of adding them to the main policy or buying a standalone learner policy that layers on top of the regular policy thats on the car. As with any short term policy the cost per day is much higher but you arent committing to a year or cancellation fees. There are stories on here where the top up policy was taken assuming it'd be quick to pass and ended up very expensive as the kid took much longer, similarly the opposite where a mid length was paid for but a sooner test slot became available and so the rest of the policy lost.

As you've discovered, learners arent too expensive to insure, its nearly qualified drivers where the price spikes. One advantage of them being the policyholder is they start the slow process of building up their NCD to take some of the sting out of the high premiums esp if they are going to be paying them themselves in a couple of years.