Car insurance

Godmother

Hi new to this but just wondering why my car insurance has doubled!

Apparently this is across the board after speaking to others.. £400 last year,lowest I can get is £780 this year.. really can’t understand why. 
People running 2 cars will find this impossible. 

DullGreyGuy

Average increase is less than double but most are seeing notable increases and next year is likely to be similar again. Search on these forums, there are several links to articles from the likes of PWC/Deloittes who were predicting these sorts of increases and rationalising why they'd be happening. 

In short, insurers on average made an underwriting loss for the last two years for Home and Motor, claims costs are increase well above inflation and so insurers are increasing prices to balance the books again (though even with the increases the consultancies were predicting further losses this year hence the increases next year)

MorningcoffeeIV

Godmother said:

People running 2 cars will find this impossible. 

That's quite a sweeping statement that clearly isn't true.

Some people will find it more challenging.  Most are likely to manage.

Timsnow

Actually my car insurance went from £500 last to just over £2000 this year hence I changed my vehicle,now this is proving to be a problem with the AA now asking for an extra £75.00 almost one month in as they have found a non fault incident going back to 2019 which was cleared through the other parties insurance. Completely forgot about this "incident" as it was too long ago but it appears we were insured with the AA at the time so they have found this in their database,why did this not come up in the quote? Seems to me I am just being ripped off by insurance because they can.

NINJA59

Timsnow said:

Actually my car insurance went from £500 last to just over £2000 this year hence I changed my vehicle,now this is proving to be a problem with the AA now asking for an extra £75.00 almost one month in as they have found a non fault incident going back to 2019 which was cleared through the other parties insurance. Completely forgot about this "incident" as it was too long ago but it appears we were insured with the AA at the time so they have found this in their database,why did this not come up in the quote? Seems to me I am just being ripped off by insurance because they can.

Nope there is a shared database called claims and underwriting exchange (CUE) run by MIB. Over 90% of insurers are signed up to it, it holds records of claims and potential claims for motor, home and personal injury. 

It can be checked at quote, inception, claim or if the insurer considers there to be a need to. 

Clearly you have had a failure to answer one of their questions correctly regarding incidents within 5 yrs (whether it led to a claim or not and i dont think 5yrs is "long ago" either). They found it at one of the stages above, flagged it to you and furthermore gave you an opportunity to correct such information.

It is not their responsibility to disclose something they consider critical to their risk profile and premium calculation, but your own when entering the information.

A rip off? Not really, you incorrectly disclosed the risk being taken on and they allowed you to correct it with what happened to be an additional premium increase. It is much better than them finding an issue and denying a claim or your entire policy leaving you with that to disclose....(an extreme example granted).

CosmicYak

My car insurance renewal quote from DirectLine has just gone up by 50%.  When I queried this with them, I was told that these steep rises in premiums were occurring across the board, and it had nothing to do with me, personally.  A quick visit to a price comparison site resulted in me switching to a new provider within a few minutes and avoiding any increase in premium at all.  These companies are obviously just relying on customer inertia when it comes to shopping around, which it is always best to do (or certainly was in my case).     

DullGreyGuy

CosmicYak said
A quick visit to a price comparison site resulted in me switching to a new provider within a few minutes and avoiding any increase in premium at all.  These companies are obviously just relying on customer inertia when it comes to shopping around, which it is always best to do (or certainly was in my case).     

It's easy to cut price by cutting quality... cheap insurance can prove to be very expensive when it comes down to it... hopefully you've bought from a quality provider and not bought on price alone. 

Since January 2022 insurers can no longer charge existing customers more than they would a new customer (via the same channel) for Motor and Home. So if your theory is correct and they are relying on customer inertia and overcharging then they must have effectively closed their business to new customers. Not a strategy that works for long. 

Id agree that shopping around is the right thing to do, just heed the warning above and buy on value not price. We get frequent posts on here from people who bought cheap and then came to regret their choice.

dunstonh

 Seems to me I am just being ripped off by insurance because they can.

Lets not forget that you were the one that failed to notify the insurer of this claim.  So, in effect, you were trying to rip them off.

l3sl3yann3

Godmother said:

Hi new to this but just wondering why my car insurance has doubled!

Apparently this is across the board after speaking to others.. £400 last year,lowest I can get is £780 this year.. really can’t understand why. 
People running 2 cars will find this impossible. 

This exact same thing happened to me. My insurance increase 150%. I have not had any accidents and have an additional year no claims so couldn't understand it. I spoke with someone at Admiral and they immediately took £150 off my renewal quote however the insurance was still much higher than I could afford. They couldn't provide me with a reason as to why my insurance had increased so dramatically other than their underwriters look at various criteria.

Even on price comparison sites I was receiving insane quotes. Tesco quoted me £1,023 - I have been driving for 18 years without a single claim being made and lived in and around the same post code area. Eventually I have taken insurance from Hastings Direct. I would rather have stayed with some of the more well known insurers but financially it just wasn't possible. i know there is some criticism on here from others about switching but I have read their reviews and terms and they appear to be reputable. I have to have a black box in my car to get insurance at an affordable price. This is something I always thought was designed for new drivers rather than experienced drivers however it reduced the quote by £100 and going through a cashback website, I will receive £45.

DullGreyGuy

l3sl3yann3 said:
This is something I always thought was designed for new drivers rather than experienced drivers however it reduced the quote by £100 and going through a cashback website, I will receive £45.

It was originally conceived for young drivers, who by default tend to be inexperienced, as it was felt firstly the quality of driving varied much more than between 50 year olds (for example) and secondly that having big brother watching may temper desires to show off to friends etc 

Once an idea becomes reality things evolve and since black box insurance was first conceived "big data" and the ability to process the volumes of data have changed significantly. Even in the first couple of years there were manufacturers of the black boxes touting to insurers that they'd provide the box and the data connections for free in exchange for an anonymised copy of the data for their own purposes (the company I talked to thought there was value in selling such data to local councils or would put you in a good place if VED was ever changed to a where/when/how you drive model which was being discussed as a possible future thing)

beatthebookienet

Electric cars are putting up everyone's premiums

https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/well-all-pay-the-price-of-soaring-ev-insurance/