Another over priced car insurance renewal quote!

Emanef

Just looking at our car insurance renewals as they're due in three weeks. My wife's insurance for her Audi A3 was £306 last year with Hastings. Their automatic renewal quote was £550! That's £244 more than last years, despite there being no change, no claims, etc! That's crazy!

Most comparison sites have renewal quotes of just under £300, so I've just cancelled with Hastings and gone with another, so it's not a problem, but I just felt the need to have a rant about it! I can't understand why they'd put it up so much. Even when I went online to cancel it automatically offered me £320 for the renewal! I'd have cancelled regardless out of principal!

Ridiculous! At least mine was slightly less than last year! 

k12479

Emanef said:

That's crazy! 

'Crazy' based on what, the actuarial model you've built in Excel or the fact that you'd rather not spend an additional £244?

DullGreyGuy

Firstly, welcome to inflation. In principle if all else remained the same insurance should go up each year as costs increase with inflation. Inflation isn't uniform though and for several years things that insurers have to pay for have increased faster than the average. 

Insurance is also impacted by non-inflationary factors like low litigious we have become, safety features reducing accidents, legislation changes on whiplash and solicitors fees, increased technology  hence in relative terms insurance has come down when you adjust historic premiums for indexation. 

Secondly, companies go through cycles... sometimes they go for volume so slash prices to build the book, companies can only make losses for so long before they need to increase them to cover their anticipated costs + risk margin at least. 

Your premiums may be "ridiculous" to you but you're still way below the average premiums in the UK even at the higher quote

Mildly_Miffed

That one insurer didn't want her business.

Simple as that.

Maybe they feel they're over-exposed to that particular risk demographic, for whatever reason.

Ganga

I know most motor insurance went up last year ,Brexit ,struggling to get parts out of Europe for repairs ,wage inflation etc. but i thought they would level out this year as inflation has finally fallen ,as pointed out it always pays to shop about and not take auto renewals.

HillStreetBlues

Mildly_Miffed said:

That one insurer didn't want her business.

Simple as that.

Maybe they feel they're over-exposed to that particular risk demographic, for whatever reason.

But they did, otherwise they wouldn't have knocked it down by £230.

Hoenir

Just make sure the cover is on a like for like basis. 

Bigphil1474

Lazy people auto renew and some would be paying that £550. Same as some people are still on the standard British Gas tariff they took out in 1978, and some people pay full price for Sky TV or Virgin Media. The companies rely on people not being price savvy, and the ones that are savvy, don't pay stupid prices (although having said that we are on the standard rate at British Gas as we've just moved into a house with that )  

To be fair, my car insurance went up by £140 earlier this year on renewal, and it was still the cheapest I could find, so you've done well to find a good deal. 

Money_Grabber13579

I use a broker for my car insurance and the cheapest quote they could get this year, which involved switching insurer, was over £1k. That’s up from £550 last year, I’ve been driving almost 20 years and have full no claims bonus. They told me there has been a significant increase in claims, which is driving the increase.

Given that there seems to be an increasing proportion of society that sees insurance fraud as a victimless crime, it’s obvious that we’re all victims.

HillStreetBlues

Bigphil1474 said:

Lazy people auto renew and some would be paying that £550. Same as some people are still on the standard British Gas tariff they took out in 1978, and some people pay full price for Sky TV or Virgin Media. The companies rely on people not being price savvy, and the ones that are savvy, don't pay stupid prices (although having said that we are on the standard rate at British Gas as we've just moved into a house with that )  

To be fair, my car insurance went up by £140 earlier this year on renewal, and it was still the cheapest I could find, so you've done well to find a good deal. 

It just shows how bad the new law was draughted  with old customers not paying more than new ones.
Your increase is just under what I paid.

Grumpy_chap

DullGreyGuy said:

things that insurers have to pay for have increased 

We, collectively, do bring this on ourselves, though.  There should be rules to enforce "minimisation" of costs incurred as a result of an incident and excess costs incurred through the "claims management" and hire car companies should be outwith insurance.

My neighbour had an accident in his A-Class at the beginning of the year.  He grumbled about the courtesy car (equivalent size, but non-premium brand) and then went via a claims management company who furnished him with an Audi S5 Quattro (far better than the A-Class).
Now, several months on, the insurers are quibbling over the hire car costs - they have accrued to £14k - and the claims management company are pursuing my neighbour directly.
This type of extreme expense simply should not fall to insurance to cover, IMO.

They didn't learn, though. Yesterday, the neighbour's daughter dented her A-Class, but currently very happy because she went straight to the claims management company and enjoying the top-spec C-Class.  No doubt, she'll also accrue excessive hire car costs and end up with the same discussion around liability for costs as her Dad...