Car insurance premiums

Molehusband

I saved 15% on my car insurance by switching the gear into reverse, pulling away from the accident and going back to practice reverse parallel parking with my Austin 1100🤣

[Deleted User]

The low annual mileage will be putting your premium up, although if that is the same as last year, then it wouldn't explain all of the increase. 

What's more likely is that you have now moved into a higher risk category. Have a look elsewhere, as different insurers target different groups.

The agent misled you with the new law - he was probably referring to the no new customer discounting, which wouldn't impact you, other than that all insurers have had to come up with new pricing structures.

400ixl

Age will be contributing factor, combining that with low mileage may also not help. You are getting older, your reactions are slowing and you are doing low mileage which means less practice and muscle memory which all increase risk.

Different insurers have different types of people they prefer to cover, age demographic being one of them. It may be you have now hit an age that they do not want to specialise in and as such raise the premium. The agents will have little insight into the way the prices are made up.

Have you done a search of other insurers and are they all in the same higher price band? There may be other insurers such as Saga who are more tuned to your demographic. Go to the comparison sites to start with GoCompare, MoneySupermarket etc and then maybe some of the insurers who don't appear on them like Aviva, Direct Line.

[Deleted User]

Molehusband said:

Deleted_User said:

The low annual mileage will be putting your premium up, although if that is the same as last year, then it wouldn't explain all of the increase. 

What's more likely is that you have now moved into a higher risk category. Have a look elsewhere, as different insurers target different groups.

The agent misled you with the new law - he was probably referring to the no new customer discounting, which wouldn't impact you, other than that all insurers have had to come up with new pricing structures.

Low annual mileage putting up my premium - that sounds unbelievable? 

Only if you don't understand risk.

Very low mileage drivers tend to be higher risk than others, due to the lack of ongoing practice. Of course, you then get to a point where the mileage is so high, that the risk increases simply due to number of hours behind the wheel.

Only change the mileage if you haven't been telling the truth about how many miles you actually do. You want your information to be accurate. Don't try to manage risk by changing your answers to something less than truthful.

Brie

I suspect that it may have more to do with LV trying to shake off it's Friendly Society status.  part of that will include getting rid of the older generation of people that have been members for decades.  These people didn't go for the idea of a payout so they're trying to move them away by other means to leave them with only greedy youngsters.  

Either that or they have whatever your age was at last renewal is as their upper limit for a payment tranche. 

Robin9

Also in my mid 70 and 3000 miles my premium DOWN £197 to £164

Shop around

unforeseen

I was with LV until May when they put up my renewal by over £100 with no changes or claims. 
I looked around for new insurance at that point

dunstonh

Low annual mileage putting up my premium - that sounds unbelievable? 

Nope.   The less experienced a driver is, the more likely they are to suffer a claim.   Going too low on the mileage can actually increase the premiums.

As regards my driving ability, I've been awarded several certificates for advanced driving (including being given top rating by the retired commandant of Hendon Police Driving School). I was a government Approved Driving Instructor and registered for advanced instruction with RAC for many years. I was also a Chief Instructor in the Star Rider National Motorcycle Training Scheme and registered with government as examiner for Part 1 of the Motorcycle test.
I served as a voluntary community bus driver for a number of years.

Unless the insurer asks those questions and has a risk/pricing model that takes those things into account, they don't mean a thing.   You are in a collective pot of other drivers of your age, of your mileage etc.     

Would you care to share information about better deals you've been offered?

No point as you don't know if that person is in the same collective pots as you would be.  Age?  mileage, car? and all the other risks considered.   

Go get a quote on a comparison site using your details and see what it comes up with.

 I was staggered to recently receive a renewal quote vastly increasing the annual premium from £292 to £399.

In addition to the level of risk changing every year as already mentioned, there are other factors as well.  LV General insurance was bought by Allianz in December 2019 and no longer part of the Friendly society.     So, pricing models and risk models etc will be adjusted with Allianz taking data from what they consider the best sources for them.     

Robin9

Molehusband said:

Robin9 said:

Also in my mid 70 and 3000 miles my premium DOWN £197 to £164

Shop around

Is that £164 for comprehensive cover? If so, would you care to share the name of the insurance company?

Dial Direct

I'm 73 -  car is a Dacia Sandero - £5000 -  full no claims - fully comp - live in West Midlands

dunstonh

I've approximately 60 years experience of driving with a full licence. Is that classed as "inexperienced"? 

Plenty of time to build up bad habits and get out of date with modern road/driving standards if you are only doing 3000 miles a year.

Secondly, where I live, we have had a pandemic called Coronavirus. We were subjected to a thing called "lockdown" and told not to travel large distances or risk being fined for lawbreaking. 

That is strange as Coronavirus was an issue for the UK in 2020. Not so much in 2021 and barely registers in 2022.

Maybe you should consider moving to the UK.

 I am a person who obeys the law and I informed my insurance company that, due to Coronavirus, I would be significantly reducing mileage which they accepted.

And insurers accepted that in 2020 and didn't change risk pricing because of it.  However, there are no laws restricting your travel in the UK and anyone making a personal choice to drive less should accept that they are an increasing risk to someone that drives more regularly.

Are you seriously suggesting that LV= will class me as "inexperienced" for only having had full licence for about 60 years and will penalise me for obeying the Coronavirus lockdown rules? You're now telling me that I should have continued to drive my much larger pre-Covid mileage and encourage police to issue me fines for breaking the Coronavirus law?What lockdown rules are you referring to?     
Why do you think that driving breaks coronavirus laws?
You do realise that this is 2022 and not 2020?

yksi

I think you're too busy being outraged to understand what people are saying. YOUR risk is not based on you as a special, talented individual. It is based on the pooled information they have on people of your age and in your area driving your model of car.

You drive very few miles. "People" in this situation can lose driving ability due to the lack of practice. EVERYONE becomes less good at things when they do them less. Even you, even if you're still the gold star driver of a driving club, (an award which has nothing to do with your premium in the first place because it's simply not factored in). Your rant over Covid was nonsensical. It doesn't matter one iota whether you were being a good boy scout and staying home and that this seems "unfair", it matters that you drove less and have less recent driving experience, and you are, therefore, likely to be less proficient at driving. 

As well as people, vehicles age. A premium will increase over time on the same car due to the increased likelihood of things like rust, parts wearing out, or scarcity of parts. Many countries are in economic crisis, pushing prices up far beyond our own inflation of 10%. Cars, in case you haven't noticed, have also had a crisis of chips, so if your car were written off, its replacement price might actually be 20-40% higher than a year ago. My own car is now worth more than I paid for it in 2018, and it's 14 years old.

My premium went up by £60, I don't live near you and I'm not anywhere near your age. The most likely reason is a combination of inflation, you moving into a riskier age group, and your car being a year older. The company is not personally applying a penalty to YOU, and you need to stop being so individually outraged at your "treatment" or "punishment". It's purely and simply based on calculated risk plus repair costs, and they have more data on how people of your demographic drive than you do.