Motor insurance hike - 300%

subjecttocontract

My Range Rover was £620 last year and the renewal in March is around £1100 which I think is ok,  it's certainly less of an increase than I was expecting. Jaguar Land Rover are offering their own insurance cover so I'll get a quote to see if it's less.

DullGreyGuy

subjecttocontract said:
Jaguar Land Rover are offering their own insurance cover so I'll get a quote to see if it's less.

Not exactly, look at the footer of the insurance page and you will see Land Rover have licensed their brand to a middleman called Wrisk Transfer who'll setup and service the policy which will be underwriting by Highway, part of the Allianz group. 

John_Pierpoint

I am what could be classed as an old codger, driving a Ford Mondeo diesel which is a quarter of my age. I do less than 5,000 miles a year.

i have three years of history with a member of the holding company that includes Churchill etc. before that I was a LV customer, with an annual haggle.

My renewal quote is a bump up on my £2xx premium of last year to £3yy. I have haggle 10% off the £3yy.

Even so, the aggregators can still better than the 10% discount.
If it is a £5 er saving that is a better-the-devil-you-know situation but £50 is a move for a pensioner, who has not paid out on a RTA since the 1960s. 

However all the cheap quotes, with the exception of something called Budget, are with BANKS.

What is their game? Presumably they are fronting for some other organisation? Or have they set up some sort of pooling deal for bankers? Are they just finding a home for all that spare money, still earning a pittance in saving accounts? What is going on?

Price isn’t everything, claims handling is important.

Any thoughts?

John.

DullGreyGuy

John_Pierpoint said:

However all the cheap quotes, with the exception of something called Budget, are with BANKS.

What is their game? Presumably they are fronting for some other organisation? Or have they set up some sort of pooling deal for bankers? Are they just finding a home for all that spare money, still earning a pittance in saving accounts? What is going on?

To be an insurer you need a substantial amount of money, being a broker etc you don't. Lloyd of London have tried to make it easier to launch an insurer by creating a "syndicate in a box" where you "only" need £50m capital plus however many million you need to run your business for 3 years. 

Consumer insurance, compared to Mortgages etc has been seen as a cash business and so attractive to banks. RBS provided the money to launch Direct Line (and to buy Churchill) before being made to divest it after 2008 bailout. HBOS and others have all been involved in the launch of other companies over time but generally fairly arms length.

Many companies, banks and otherwise, realise they can licence their brand to others to generate easy commission from their brand (look at Martin in the top left here who sold this site for tens of millions but still licenses his image to the site for an undisclosed sum). Generally you can look at the footer of a site and see what's going on...


 RBS - still use Direct Line Group
 Nationwide - Home is RSA
 Bank of Scotland - Budget Insurance (broker)
 HSBC - Aviva
 Sainsbury Bank - act as a broker 
 Tesco Bank - an insurer themselves (originally DLG)


 If you look outside of banks some may be surprised, RAC car insurance for example is also Budget Insurance rebranded to RAC

nuffznuff

Hi peeps!

I followed the advice of many on here: Aviva, Direct Line, Admiral, LV, Saga, 1st Central… none were any good. I’ve waited until “the optimum time” (varies, but rule of thumb is between 21-26 days prior and today is Renewal Day -25) and got to less than 200% hike - £611 from Aviva Zero – through MSM. The next best was Asda – but some way behind.

In answer to some of your questions:

Age – 66 (HM The Wife is 65)

Car – Vx Astra 1.6D hatchback 65 reg (who’d want to nick that!)

Employment status – I’m un-retiring soon, but I got quotes for “self-employed” and “retired” - £5 difference