Insuring a new(er) car

Bigphil1474

The last time I changed car mid policy, from a 11 year old car to a 2 year old car, my premium went down £30, but there was a £25 admin charge. Every little ....

MyRealNameToo

WellKnownSid said:

Insurance group probably meant something back in the day but with millions of data points available over many decades, a single number to express the entire risk profile and the propensity to many different types of peril feels a bit weird.

When our son was 17 he discovered that insuring a group 30 car cost him a fraction of what his colleagues were paying for cars in the group 1-5 range.  It turns out that PFYs are far more likely to be found at the scene of a wreckage surround by a 1 litre supermini than a brown 5 cylinder Volvo estate.

They still mean something today... a group 30 car will cost more to repair than a group 1-5 in the same accident. Just thats only one part of the puzzle. 

When pricing was done by sending brokers books each month then grouping cars was a necessary evil as listing every single make, model and variant with differential pricing would be a massive book just on vehicle selection given they may differentiate between different versions of the same model over time. Some insurers used the standard groupings as then it was just a case of the broker looking it up on a general tool but others maintained their own groupings as they did see the difference between hot hatches -v- family estate vehicles. 

Over time pricing books changed to disks which changed to software vendors pushing data and ultimately to realtime  APIs. The idea of insurers running their own groupings though percisted after this as whilst the technology existed to manage the millions of variants of vehicles available insurers typically dont have enough datapoints to get statistically relevant results at that level. 

I dont have the stats to hand but there used to be a comment that despite the popularity of the ford fiesta and its 22m sales that not every combination of model, varient and optional extras had been sold so clearly no insurer had a statistically relevant amount of data on them all given some were never even made as a vehicle. 

brewerdave

Northern_Wanderer said:

Before making a decision on purchasing the new(er) car, you have been getting insurance quotes, right? 

Why I'm asking is because for instance a Suzuki Swift is a neat little car but the insurance group is horrendous! And that's not something you want to find out after agreeing to purchase a car when you come to insure it!

No. I've been looking and test driving a number of small cars eg MG3, Suzuki Swift, Hyundai i20 , Skoda Fabia etc .
Currently I'm only paying Aviva online ~ £140 pa for my Kia Ceed !! As far as I can see Aviva will charge £50 to cancel so the balance of the premium at the end of this month is about £7 to be refunded!
 I've put in the details of the MG3 to just change and the website says no extra premium ! Guess I'll have to try the other cars now to see what happens. Nothing about an admin fee.
 Haven't searched for new quotes yet - the search engines want a lot of info about the newer car -won't give a quote without reg. number.

Thanks for all replies -  much appreciated. 

amibovvered

 Haven't searched for new quotes yet - the search engines want a lot of info about the newer car -won't give a quote without reg. number.

That's what I was wondering - years and years ago it was easy to get generic insurance quotes when you were in the market for a new car but how do you do that when the computer asks for the reg number - am I missing something?

Mildly_Miffed

amibovvered said:

 Haven't searched for new quotes yet - the search engines want a lot of info about the newer car -won't give a quote without reg. number.

That's what I was wondering - years and years ago it was easy to get generic insurance quotes when you were in the market for a new car but how do you do that when the computer asks for the reg number - am I missing something?

You just say to the nice meerkat that you don't know the reg, but this is the make/model/spec/year. Simples.

Northern_Wanderer

brewerdave said:

Northern_Wanderer said:

Before making a decision on purchasing the new(er) car, you have been getting insurance quotes, right? 

Why I'm asking is because for instance a Suzuki Swift is a neat little car but the insurance group is horrendous! And that's not something you want to find out after agreeing to purchase a car when you come to insure it!

No. I've been looking and test driving a number of small cars eg MG3, Suzuki Swift, Hyundai i20 , Skoda Fabia etc . 

Don't forget about the Honda Jazz in that case, although they did go fully hybrid in 2020 which you may or may not like. Although 2015-2020 are very good, and any before that as well. 

brewerdave

Northern_Wanderer said:

brewerdave said:

Northern_Wanderer said:

Before making a decision on purchasing the new(er) car, you have been getting insurance quotes, right? 

Why I'm asking is because for instance a Suzuki Swift is a neat little car but the insurance group is horrendous! And that's not something you want to find out after agreeing to purchase a car when you come to insure it!

No. I've been looking and test driving a number of small cars eg MG3, Suzuki Swift, Hyundai i20 , Skoda Fabia etc . 

Don't forget about the Honda Jazz in that case, although they did go fully hybrid in 2020 which you may or may not like. Although 2015-2020 are very good, and any before that as well. 

Unfortunately ,nearly new (< 2 years old) Hondas are very pricey - over my budget !!

Northern_Wanderer

brewerdave said:

Northern_Wanderer said:

brewerdave said:

Northern_Wanderer said:

Before making a decision on purchasing the new(er) car, you have been getting insurance quotes, right? 

Why I'm asking is because for instance a Suzuki Swift is a neat little car but the insurance group is horrendous! And that's not something you want to find out after agreeing to purchase a car when you come to insure it!

No. I've been looking and test driving a number of small cars eg MG3, Suzuki Swift, Hyundai i20 , Skoda Fabia etc . 

Don't forget about the Honda Jazz in that case, although they did go fully hybrid in 2020 which you may or may not like. Although 2015-2020 are very good, and any before that as well. 

Unfortunately ,nearly new (< 2 years old) Hondas are very pricey - over my budget !!

I wasn't sure what sort of age of car you were after. The Honda Hybrids have multiplied in price compared to the previous ICE models, sadly.