1 NCB 2 vehicles

Arranheal

Has anyone had any luck challenging the car insurance companies unreasonable 'standard' that your NCB cannot be applied to a second vehicle?

After all, I have paid for and earned the no claims bonus over many years and I can't drive two vehicles at the same time. Given I can transfer the NCB to a different vehicle (whichever gives me the best saving) it's not about the vehicle at all and is a loyalty tool for mostly safe / careful drivers.

Having just been charged an additional £600 on my existing insurance policy so I could use my NCB on a new vehicle I feel completely ripped off by the industry. I'm the same person driving the same vehicle and I still have a NCB just not with that vehicle. This seems completely unfair and unjust.

Any success anyone?

born_again

While you may not be able to drive them both at the same time. They can both be involved in a event that requires insurance to have to pay out at the same time.

Just think, you are insuring 2 cars. NCB goes up by 1 year on both of them each year. Despite not driving both all year?

TheSpectator

Why would anyone have had success, it's just not permitted end of. It it was 'unfair' and 'unjust' I'm sure the regulators would have intervened.

Veteransaver

I'm surprised NCB made much difference to insurance quotes, in my experience it makes next to no difference whether I put 0 years no claims or 10!
Can you cancel the policy and insure it elsewhere and declare 0 NCB on it.
Might be cheaper to lose what's left of the current policy and take out a new one?

400ixl

Some companies will give you an introductory no claim on another vehicle.

As lets face it, the whole thing was just a marketing gimmick that stuck. Any company can give you any discount they want for any purpose they feel fit to tag it.

Not being able to apply it to more than one policy was just a decision that became a standard.

DullGreyGuy

Arranheal said:

Has anyone had any luck challenging the car insurance companies unreasonable 'standard' that your NCB cannot be applied to a second vehicle?

After all, I have paid for and earned the no claims bonus over many years and I can't drive two vehicles at the same time. Given I can transfer the NCB to a different vehicle (whichever gives me the best saving) it's not about the vehicle at all and is a loyalty tool for mostly safe / careful drivers.

Having just been charged an additional £600 on my existing insurance policy so I could use my NCB on a new vehicle I feel completely ripped off by the industry. I'm the same person driving the same vehicle and I still have a NCB just not with that vehicle. This seems completely unfair and unjust.

Any success anyone?

NCD is a marketing ploy and nothing to do with being a safer driver, NCD becomes clearly a marketing tool when you considered NCD Protection.


Two cars can have an incident at the same time even if insured by the same person, for a start you could misjudge the gap and hit your second car with your first. If you insure it as insured only driver and declare you use another vehicle it will normally result in a lower premium to represent the fact there will be times where you are driving something else and so not this vehicle. 


Swiftcover and Direct Dial both will offer to mirror NCD in certain circumstances however as others have said, NCD is rarely the 70% discount it used to be (and the vast majority of people have full NCD) and so insuring with them with a mirrored NCD may be more expensive than having a policy with 0 NCD elsewhere. 

400ixl

Veteransaver said:

I'm surprised NCB made much difference to insurance quotes, in my experience it makes next to no difference whether I put 0 years no claims or 10!
Can you cancel the policy and insure it elsewhere and declare 0 NCB on it.
Might be cheaper to lose what's left of the current policy and take out a new one?

If you or / and the vehicle are a low risk then that is often true as the discount is a smaller amount as the base amount is low. If either are a high risk then the base price can be much higher and therefore the discount is a larger number.

DullGreyGuy

400ixl said:

Veteransaver said:

I'm surprised NCB made much difference to insurance quotes, in my experience it makes next to no difference whether I put 0 years no claims or 10!
Can you cancel the policy and insure it elsewhere and declare 0 NCB on it.
Might be cheaper to lose what's left of the current policy and take out a new one?

If you or / and the vehicle are a low risk then that is often true as the discount is a smaller amount as the base amount is low. If either are a high risk then the base price can be much higher and therefore the discount is a larger number.

It's not just the difference between absolute and relative terms. Most insurers will have a floor and won't sell below that price so if your premiums before NCD are only £1 above the minimum premium then irrespective of if you have 1 years NCD or 30 years NCD its going to represent a £1 discount.

Aretnap

NCD is neither fair nor unfair. It's a marketing gimmick - nothing more, nothing less. I'm not sure how you could even start to go about "challenging" a marketing gimmick.

You're right that it is actually a form of loyalty discount - a way to encourage customers (especially the good ones who don't make claims) to renew year after year, and as originally envisaged at the dawn of time you would only have got it if you stayed with your insurer at renewal.

That didn't last long however. As the idea took off insurers realised that if they wanted to attract new cutomers they would have to offer to match the discounts that their rivals were offering. A bit like how Tesco might offer to accept Sainsbury's money off vouchers - not because they're under any legal or moral obligation to accept them, but just because they think that it's a good way to poach Sainsbury's customers. That's the basis for it being transferrable between insurers and policies - no more, no less.

But it follows that if you don't have an existing insurer who is offering you a renewal discount (eg because you're insuring a second car for the first time) there's no particular incentive for another insurer to offer you a discount either. Which is why most insurers won't let you use it on two policies at once - there's no commercial incentive for them to. Basically you're in the position of someone who has just got a "£10 off your next shop" voucher from Tesco and is asking why they can't use it twice at two different supermarkets.

That's the theory at any rate. In practice of course NCD has been rather uncomfortably incorporated into the general risk-based pricing system that insurers use so if you look hard enough you might find an insurer willing to mirror your NCD on a second car. But that's a non-standard question - most people don't have two cars - so not one that will be well served by comparison sites. And as above NCD isnt necessarily a massive discount these days so there's no guarantee that (say) Swiftcover with NCD will be cheaper than Admiral without NCD or whatever.

Really it would probably be better all round if insurers scrapped the whole silly system - it creates distortions in the market like the one you've encountered, and it has demonstably failed to do what it was originally intended to do. But nowadays people treat their NCD as if it's (a) a human right and (b) the most valuable thing that they'll ever own (you can even get insurance for it!), and so the first insurer to get risd of it would immediately lose all their business. But ultimately it's neither (a) nor (b) - it's just a marketing gimmick that got out of hand.