£3,400 Insurance Quote

rcotterill

Can anyone advise me?

My partner and I are just about to buy her old company car - a Mercedes SLK, and are trying to get insurance quotes. As company car drivers, we have never owned a car and so have no insurance record or no claims bonus.

We've both had a couple of speed tickets over the last five years.

The company has claimed four times on its insurance for the car since 2000.

As a result, and because we live in Hackney, East London, the best quote we can get is £3,400, which means we'll find it very difficult to justify keeping the car (This was fully comp. We got £24 off for 3rd part only!!!).

HOWEVER:

(1) Two of these insurance claims were for incidents that no private owner trying to protect their no claims bonus would have paid (£450 and £236 respectively)

(2) My partner's speed tickets were both four years ago, and mine were for doing 40 on open three lane roads late evening, without much danger to anyone (don't you hate cameras!)

(3) only one of the claims (the £450 one) was caused by us, the others being the result of being hit while parked, vandalism, and attempted theft

So I'm guessing that the insurers' computers are looking at 4 speed tickets and 4 claims and marking us down as very high risk, while a human might take the details of the actual incidents into account.

I'm trying to find some insurance company which might look at my individual circumstances rather than feed the data into a computer: can we talk to an underwriter rather than a call centre?

(confused.com came up with £4,030)

scheming_gypsy

As far as i'm aware you shouldn't be putting the claims in. When you're applying they ask if you have made a claim within the x amount of years not has the car.

Also some insurers give discount if you're ex company car drivers so worth mentioning it when you're asking for a quote.

dunstonh

if the company car operator will give you confirmation of a period without claims the new insurance company would accept that. Although that is unlikely with your claims record.

4 times in 4 years, couple of speeding points each and one of the worst postcodes in the country.... i think you are lucky at £3400

Apart from spending one night ringing about ten 0800 numbers to get quotes, there isnt much else you can do.

rcotterill

Thanks DD and scheming Gypsy.

Unfortunately you've summarised what seems to be the only two options open to me:

1) To not admit to any claims, as they weren't in my/our name and hope that if we do have a horrific accident and have to pay some poor third party a lot of money for injuring them/ wrecking their Rolls Royce/ whatever, that some loss adjustor doesnt find the old claims and void our policy.

2) To pay up £3,400 to be covered for third party risk, even though we've never hit anyone.

- I'd hoped someone out there would know of a company who'd work out the risk in more detail and not just say "4 claims and you're out!"

Rob

scheming_gypsy

1) To not admit to any claims, as they weren't in my/our name and hope that if we do have a horrific accident and have to pay some poor third party a lot of money for injuring them/ wrecking their Rolls Royce/ whatever, that some loss adjustor doesnt find the old claims and void our policy.

You shouldn't need to worry about that.. you didn't own the car and were either of you driving the car at the time of any crash?
You've bought a vehicle that was being driven by somebody else, insured by somebody else and crashed by somebody else so there shouldn't be any liability to you... i could be wrong but pretty sure i'm not..

Also, trust me mate... i'd pay the £400 and £200 to keep my NCD any day of the week..

N9eav

Try https://www.confused.com It's worth a try. They have a section that recognises that you are a regular driver who may be insured on another policy but not your own.
try Tesco as well...

rcotterill

Here's how it's ended up:

We went back to the insurer who insured the company car, and offered to pay for the two minor incidents ourselves. Amazingly, this was acceptable, and our record is now no incidents since 2002.

As a result, we've been quoted £1,200 a year (still an incredible number, but it's a very nice car) from Tesco.

...so the answer was to change history, rather than try to get someone to understand it.

thanks for your help and advice folks.