Car insurance and No claims bonus for additional driver

inca1000

If I was an additional driver on my son's car insurance (new driver) and share the car, what would happen to my already accumulated no-claims years from a previous vehicle?  I have 10 years of no claims on another car, and I am assuming I won't be able to add to this as an additional driver on my son's policy. So would my no claims freeze at 10 years or if I started another policy with me as the main driver would the no claims bonus go back to NIL years? Thanks

DullGreyGuy

What's happened to that other vehicle? An NCD is like a tangible asset, it can only be used on one policy at a time, cannot be split apart nor can multiple items be combined.

Assuming you dont have it on any policy at the Moment, then most insurers will accept it for up to 2 years since it was last used. A small minority accept it up to 3 years. Generally speaking you must be declared as the policyholder to use it but some limit it to main drivers.

inca1000

I'm just running some figures to try and get the cheapest insurance for my son. I was going to sell my car as its group 12 insurance and get something group 5 or under that we can both share with me as an additional driver. I wasn't sure what would happen to my accumulated no claims years, after the 2 years would it become NIL ? Thanks

Aretnap

Yes, after two years your NCD would become zero, unless you could find one I if the vanishingly small number of insurers who will accept it for three years after it has last been used. (AFAIK the number is currently zero, since CoOp switched to only accepting it for two years).

Don't automatically assume that a lower insurance group means lower insurance premium. Insurance groups are primarily a marketing gimmick used by people who sell cheap small engined cars and insurance companies don't actually use them directly to set premiums. So the correlation between insurance group and actual insurance premiums is nowhere near perfect. Use a comparison site to find out how much insurance will actually be before you actually buy a car.

chrisw

You could be the policyholder and insure the shared car in your name using your NCD, but you would have to declare your son as the main driver, if indeed he is.

This would preserve your NCD but your son would not be building up his own, although some companies will allow a named driver discount if you stick with them when he takes out his own insurance. Or you might lose yours if he has a bump.

DullGreyGuy

inca1000 said:

I'm just running some figures to try and get the cheapest insurance for my son. I was going to sell my car as its group 12 insurance and get something group 5 or under that we can both share with me as an additional driver. I wasn't sure what would happen to my accumulated no claims years, after the 2 years would it become NIL ? Thanks

Insurance groups as classified by a combination of cost of repair, security features and performance. Most insurers don't use it because it blatantly ignores the type of person that buys one. A hot hatch will cost far more to insure than a big engined Mercedes despite being a massively lower insurance group and much cheaper vehicle.