Adding named drivers to drive me in my car as no longer able to drive

rob_2512

I am currently the owner of our car, and my disabled wife (who very rarely drives) is a named driver. But I have been told I am no longer able to drive and have 11 months left on the insurance.

We need to keep the car in order to transport my disabled wife (very few of our friends' cars are able to carry her powerchair). Three friends, all full time employed, have kindly offered to drive us if we put them on our insurance. The insurance company are very happy with me doing this (at least for this policy year, after which I suspect I will have to transfer the insurance to my wife though they didn't say this).

The insurance company agent suggested that I could put these friends down as the occupation they will doing while driving us, suggesting employed as 'driver' or 'voluntary worker' (although they will not be paid) rather than their normal job, or alternatively given the employment status of 'volunteer work', as they will only be using our car to drive us (or possibly also errands for us, though this would not be essential), but the premium increase seems high - it's tripling the premium. Does this seem right?

One friend is 28 (the other two are 50s) with no accidents but 3 points for speeding, the second has a clean licence and no accidents - these both own their own cars. The third is a named driver on their partner's insurance and has a clean licence but had 2 non-fault accidents in 2022, both fully paid by the other parties.

Any thoughts on the best way forward?

What would be the best occupation to put for our friends?

Are there any other things we could do to reduce the premium?

Isthisforreal99

Would say that's nonsense frim the call handler. Their occupation is their actualoccupation.

GrumpyDil

Yup, don't play around with occupations which could cause a claim to be rejected, just put down their actual occupation.

luci

I agree with the others. Their occupation should be the one they are paid to do by their employer if they have one.

MyRealNameToo

Adding unrelated people doesnt have the same impact as a spouse etc. Remember that mass market insurance like this is priced on averages not your specific circumstances.

Tripling the premium doesnt really give any sense of scale… if you were paying £150 and they want to charge you another £300 then that wouldnt be so bad, a slug of that will be an admin fee for a mid term adjustment. If you were paying £1,300 before and they want to charge you another £2,600 then that would be surprising.

If the sales agent told you to declare them as carers or volunteers then it would be defendable at claims stage however I think its an odd recommendation and you'll have less trouble declaring their actual careers unless one is a rock star or professional footballer.

rob_2512

I found out what happened. The form asked for who who was responsible for the accidents (the other party) and then if there was any claim 'on their insurance'. They meant the named driver being added, not the third party, but this was not at all obvious.

I put all the people with their actual occupations and the additional premium came down from £605 to £282.