Down sizing from two cars to one - Insurance question

rubble2

My wife and I currently have a car each, now both retired we are selling both cars and buying one replacement for both of us to use.

My question is, we will obviously only need one insurance policy to cover the car with one policy holder and the other person declared as an additional driver. Does it matter who takes out the insurance as the principal driver? and if not I assume we can get quotes for both of us as main driver and choose the cheaper premium (assuming there is a worthwhile saving).

Or am I missing something obvious?

Thanks in advance.

njkmr

Bear in mind if it's the same person insuring in their name ,that the other one will lose their no claims after a few years. I think it's two years only. It may be best to alternate the names each year if losing no claims is important.

REgards

Rob.

flaneurs_lobster

Seems eminently sensible way of getting quotes, as long as you can both claim to be the "main driver" ie you each drive more or less the same mileage each year.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6661867/down-sizing-from-two-cars-to-one-insurance-question

There are normally two questions, who is going to be the policyholder and who is the main driver. Traditionally the default was the policyholder was the main driver but it's becoming more common for insurers to ask.

Who the policyholder is is an irrelevance, who the main driver is is relevant. Given only one person can be the registered keeper it may be fractionally better to align registered keeper and policyholder but many insurers dont care when considering spouses.

Generally as long as you are spouses and fairly close statistically they won't question too much who the main driver is. However in principle this should be a matter of fact and not something you "decide on" (at least not with a change of who is the main driver). In principle however if they can see from all the different quotes you've been doing you've been playing around with who's declared as the main driver then they may dig into that in more detail in the event of a claim. It would be particularly true if you have 11 points on your licence, a string of prior fault claims whereas your spouse has a clean licence, they were declared as the main driver but your in the driving seat when an accident occurs.

IOWJJBTM2025

We had 6 years where we only had one car. We took it in turns to insure the car to keep our no claims. when we went back to 2 cars again two years ago both of us got no claims discounts for both cars without any issues.

If my son was to go overseas for a year and I decided to use his car I don't think there is any stipulation on preventing me having an insurance policy on a car not belonging to me. On second thoughts there are loads of people who lease cars from companies and they will never own the cars they are driving.

Trying to understand who the main driver is not easy. Providing you both actually drive I would suggest that the policy holder is the main driver each year.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81942942#Comment_81942942

Understanding who the main driver is can be easy, really depends on your setup. My aunt was a named driver on the family car for 20 years and probably drove it 3 times in total across all those years. Not hard to work out if she or her husband was the main driver.

Obviously with some it may be more challenging but to say it changes every year would be a red flag unless you can explain why it's changing every year.

luci

Since we went from two cars to one, I have alternated the insurance between us every year to keep both of our NCD. It's not in case we go back to having two cars, as that's highly unlikely. It's because one day there will only be one of you left and if it's the one who isn't the policyholder, and they still wanted to drive, they wouldn't be starting from scratch.