Adding daughter, new driver, to my car insurance.

walkerluce

Hi, I'm after some advice please.  My daughter is about to pass her driving test (we hope!) and I'm looking at the cheapest way for her to use my car.  

I had expected to add her to my insurance policy but that's looking horribly expensive.  (I'll also need to cancel insurance policy and get a new one as current one won't let me add anyone under 21.)  I've had a look at 'Drive Like a Girl' but that was over £4k.

I've thought about getting temporary insurance for her just to drive my car as she needs it, but I can't find one that includes a courtesy car (I'm dependent on my car for getting around.)

I've friends who have decided to buy their child an old, small car and insured them on that but that seems excessive too.
 
I'm interested to hear your experiences.

Thanks in advance!

flashg67

In my experience, it was cheaper (and less panic inducing) to get my two an older car  , insure in their name (with us parents as named drivers,  but of course not as the 'main' drivers). If she avoids a claim, it will start to come down hugely. My youngest was about £1300 first year, down to about £300 or so 5 yrs later

walkerluce

Thank you for replying ☺️.  I hadn’t thought about the price coming down in future years, although I hope I won’t be paying for it by then! 😀

Goudy

We did the same.
Got a reasonable low insurance group car for our lad and insured it in his name with his mum as a named driver.
This seemed to bring the premium down more than just me alone or both of us for some reason.

This way he built up his own no claims bonus.

Don't try and do this the other way around, buy a car and insure it for yourself and put her as a named driver, you could get caught out for "fronting".

Look for cars in insurance group 3 and under like a Panda, Up, Mii or Citigo, Hyundai i10.
These low groups tend to be the base models but more modern cars come with better safety kit, even on the base models.
Better safety kit tends to attract lower premiums but are obviously more expensive to buy in the first place.

New driver insurance can often be linked to telematic systems (black box) that record the driving, I would try and give these a miss if you can as a lot of people have had trouble with them.

macman

What would it cost to insure her on a budget small car?
I'm guessing the problem here is that your own car is an expensive model and so potentially very high risk for a sub-21 year old?

facade

look out for a Fiat punto, as well as pandas, these are "old people's" cars and can quite often be found in good condition, as well as being cheap insurance.

The Young 'uns all want 500s, KAs Corsas etc, which are surprisingly high insurance precisely because of inexperienced drivers using them to play bumping cars with.

walkerluce

Thanks everyone for replying.  

It looks like everyone's finding the best option to be to buy them a car.  I can't seem to make that the cheaper option for us - maybe because to add her to my insurance (i.e. buy a new policy for both of us) would be 'only' an extra £1,100 - 1,600, and we'd want to insure her on her Dad's car too (we're separated). Neither of our cars are fancy or new. Best quote for her driving her own Group 1 car, with me as an additional driver is £1,300. And obviously we'd need to buy the car and maintain it!  I think the problem here is our postcode, we live in a student area with high crime.  Ugh.

Has anyone actually found it cheaper to add them to your own insurance?  Am I missing something?

Goudy

You're missing the no claims discount.

If you insure them as a named driver, they aren't building any of their own.

If they have a bump in your car, you kiss goodbye to all your no claims discount.

macman

The only consolation is that it'll drop dramatically in a year, if no claims.

walkerluce

Thankyou again!  I expect she'll be away at uni in a year, probably in London and not needing a car, so it's mainly year one costs that feel like the deciding factors.  But, yes, losing my own hard-won NCB would be really bad.  It's protected atm but I guess it's my own future premiums that will suffer.  Feel like we need to do two cost comparisons: one without a claim and one with.

Thanks so much for you help  .

Goudy

You need to try and work out how long you are going to add her to your insurance and the cost of that.
Compared to what her own car and insurance would cost.

If you're at your max no claim discount your policy will likely stay very similar each year unless you claim as you have no more discount building up.

The younger driver loading will likely be very similar each year until the insurance no longer consider them as young (usually around 25 years old).

As a rough calculation, max no claims is usually 5 years for 65% with the first year discount being around 30%.