Car Insurance Quote Anomalies

Birdman2015

I’m in the process of changing my car and have put the details of my preferrred cars into the Direct Line quote page.

I’m currently paying £475 for a group 24 Mini Countryman.EV

I’ve been quoted a refund of £38 for a group 32 Hyundai Kona, an extra £100 for a Ford Explorer  on group 29 and an extra £51 for a group 38 Mercedes EQA.

All cars are the same age, 1 year old, all are around the same value. How on earth do they get such differing figures?

ButterCheese

It's based on so many things, not just age and model of car and how much they cost to fix.  Mostly it's to do with how many of that model of car have claims made against them i.e. how risky they are to own

MyRealNameToo

Birdman2015 said:

I’m in the process of changing my car and have put the details of my preferrred cars into the Direct Line quote page.

I’m currently paying £475 for a group 24 Mini Countryman.EV

I’ve been quoted a refund of £38 for a group 32 Hyundai Kona, an extra £100 for a Ford Explorer  on group 29 and an extra £51 for a group 38 Mercedes EQA.

All cars are the same age, 1 year old, all are around the same value. How on earth do they get such differing figures?

The "groups" are predominately a measure of how expensive it is to fix the car. For insurers thats only one piece of the puzzle, own vehicle repairs represents about 50% of the claims they pay out and doesnt matter really if you have a Countryman, EQA or Explorer if you hit a kid at 60mph it aint going to change the cost of the claim against you. 

What it also doesnt factor in is how likely the car is going to be in a claim either because its highly attractive to thieves or because the typical customer who owns one tends to drive it like a teen racer no matter if they are 18 or 48. 

When I got a quote for a Group 30ish Mini Cooper S it was notably more expensive than the Group 50 car I was looking at for the same reasons... hot hatches have more claims than luxury GTs to the extent that it offsets the higher cost of repair on the later. 

Aretnap

"Insurance groups" are not actually used by insurers to set prices, and have little correlation to actual insurance costs. They're mostly a marketing gimmick used to sell small cars.

dunstonh

All cars are the same age, 1 year old, all are around the same value. How on earth do they get such differing figures?

As you say "around the same value... which is not the same as same value.

Availability of parts, qualified repairers etc will all be different and that is one of the biggest cost areas for routine claims.