How to reduce car insurance premium?

akira181

My car insurance is due for renewal end of next month and my annual premium has jumped ~£250, going from around £550 to just shy of £900 with the cheapest provider.

I have 7 years NCB, no driving offences, annual mileage dropped from 10k to 7k a year, a £250 excess, and tried playing with the job titles. I also have my girlfriend down as a named driver, which reduces the premium by ~£30 despite her not having driven in 9 years.

Moneysupermarket valued my car at £9900 but I increased it to £12k, as it would cost around £13K to get a similar spec/age car today (second hand car market has been insane since Covid). That's the only thing I've done that might account for such a sharp increase, although I believe Churchill valued it at £13.4k last year and I insured it at that.

Work has a pool car that I can use if they’re sending me somewhere (they rarely do and someone else usually has it).  Telling the insurance I have access to a company car (exc personal) reduces the premium by ~£40.

Not much but it’s a step in the right direction, would I be lying if I done this as it’s a pool car and not a company car that I have sole use of?

Any other tricks I can try to avoid being robbed by insurance companies?

born_again

Increasing value of car does not mean you will get that as a pay out. Pay out will be as they value the car at the point of any incident.

In reality as per many posts here & elsewhere most people ins has gone up by a big % due to increased costs faced by the ins co over the last couple of years.

akira181

born_again said:

Increasing value of car does not mean you will get that as a pay out. Pay out will be as they value the car at the point of any incident.

True but if you value it £3k below market value when quoting just to get a lower premium, the insurance is going to "value" it another £2-3k below that at point of incident; assuming they don't try to void your insurance for lowballing it in the first place to avoid paying out entirely. If you want a payout representative of the car's worth or have grounds to challenge it, it needs to be valued correctly in the first place.

Webuyanycar values it at £10.2k, Autotrader value it at £12.4k, and similar ones are advertised from £13-15k by trade sellers. Maybe £11k is a more realistic valuation but that's a negligible difference in the grand scheme of % increase.

I've always put in what the car is actually worth at time of insurance purchase so if it's stolen or written off, I would get a reasonable payout to replace it. Finding out I'm short £4-6k because I've lowballed the value to begin with and they've lowballed that even further would be more problematic for me than £30 or £40 in extra premiums.

Although if the trend of unreasonable price hikes continues, I may change my school of thought very soon

DullGreyGuy

Increasing the excess is another obvious option it tends to be a U shape impact on premium with a tipping point where increasing it more sends premiums back up. Arguably oddly some do £0 excess cheaper than something like £250 so another one to check. 

Make sure you have your use declared correctly, Commuting adds cost so only include it if you need it. If you need Commuting then often Business is basically the same price so you may as well have it just in case. 

BarelySentientAI

akira181 said:

born_again said:

Increasing value of car does not mean you will get that as a pay out. Pay out will be as they value the car at the point of any incident.

True but if you value it £3k below market value when quoting just to get a lower premium, the insurance is going to "value" it another £2-3k below that at point of incident; 

No they're not. 

They're going to value it at whatever the data tables say it is worth at that time.

It isn't calculated based on depreciation from your stated value.

njkmr

You have to search around.
I do it every year on comparison sites . It stinks and is time consuming but its the only way to get it cheaper.
Slightly off topic but my house insurance went from £256 last year to renewal price of £695 this year with the same company. No claim in 30 years.
I searched around and got the house insurance for £289 this year eventually for slightly better cover.
Its a pain in the a$$.
Even worse when you have more than one car in the household.

akira181

BarelySentientAI said:

No they're not. 

They're going to value it at whatever the data tables say it is worth at that time.

It isn't calculated based on depreciation from your stated value.

My point is that the value you put in needs to be accurate in the first place. The payout will never be more than the value you put in. Undervalue it, and that's the most you can potentially get. Undervalue it too much, they might void your insurance or just write it off instead of repairing.  

Value it properly, you can negotiate your settlement if you think it's too low. The insurers have a price range to guesstimate a market value for a car they've never seen, it's not a fixed number. The settlement should be, or close to, the market value of your car at the time of the incident (assuming total loss), therefore having an accurate value to begin with is crucial.

For example, if your car is worth £12k but you tell the insurance it's worth £9k, you're essentially saying your car is in bad condition and below market value. If a total loss occurs, they'll value your car at the bottom end of their range or lower because that's how you valued your own car to begin with. If they offer £7k, you're going to have a very difficult time arguing the market value was higher, and impossible to claim it's more than £9k.

DullGreyGuy said:

Make sure you have your use declared correctly, Commuting adds cost so only include it if you need it. If you need Commuting then often Business is basically the same price so you may as well have it just in case. 

Thanks for the tip, I'll see if that has any notable difference.

BarelySentientAI

akira181 said:

The payout will never be more than the value you put in. Undervalue it, and that's the most you can potentially get. 

Incorrect.  It's commonly true that the settlement you get would be less than the originally stated value, because depreciation does tend to do that and most people's valuations are relatively accurate.  It isn't, however, a cap on settlement or (usually) subject to 'underinsurance' in quite the same way as a buildings/contents policy can be.

Your logic is sort of generally correct about where in a possible range of values it might sit - but insurers are not sitting around wondering how much wear you have on your brake pads and whether there is a spill on one of the seat cushions.

You claim for such-and-such model and trim, of a certain age and a certain mileage, and that's where their initial valuation would come from.  If a model has become rarer / more desirable / any of the other strange things that affect used car prices, then you can get a settlement figure higher than the original value.  Uncommon outside of niche circumstances, but possible.

molerat

My motor renewal has increased £220 on last year which was £140 on the previous - a 130% increase.  Shopped around and got the same cover for £10 more than last year.

DullGreyGuy

akira181 said:
The payout will never be more than the value you put in. 

Certainly with my former employer it could be as the policy stated you were paid up to the market value of vehicle with no reference to the amount you declared. 

The actual declared value wasnt used for pricing at all and was only used as a cap for TPFT/TPO cover, you couldn't buy it if you declared your car to be worth more than £5,000 and for the Tracker security endorsement which was applied to any car declared as being worth more than £50,000 (and also applied to many specific makes/models irrespective of value)

400ixl

That value box is also used to check the value you put in against their expected value and if a big enough difference is there then it could trigger an underwriter review or other requirements.

It does not for any insurer I know of set the maximum valuation for any payout.