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Being a reliable driver gets you punished
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Are you sure you are comparing like with like?
Since you are a perfect driver who has never had an accident, and therefore never will, you will be searching for the cheapest possible product that allows you to legally drive the vehicle and nothing else, with the largest voluntary excesses that they allow because you'll never have to claim so why not?
Likely to be serviced by online chat only.
Other seekers after car insurance might actually like being able to speak to someone on the phone, might want optional extras like breakdown or legal cover and maybe don't want large optional excesses.
This all adds cost.
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Car insurance just does not work like that any more. It is a regulatory requirement that a new customer only gets offered the same deal as an existing customer. They don't "chance their arm" during the renewal (admittedly it is not the same for other products like breakdown cover).
What happened where I worked was that the company would decide each year which type of customers they would go for and which they didn't really want as customers anymore. For example, one year it was their bright idea to run credit checks on all their customers (with their agreement - in the small print) - the premiums were significantly increased as the stats showed that people with poor credit were much more likely to have a claim than people with good credit.
I know I probably come across as a car insurance advocate but I'm not. I once got a renewal from the company I worked for and it increased by 150% - I simply wasn't in their preferred customer list for that year so I just left and went with someone else instead. The next year the premium was back to low again so I re-joined them.
They once signed a deal with Tesco for life insurance and the premiums through Tesco was cheaper than my 30% staff discount. It's just like playing a real life game of monopoly (and I love monopoly).
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Try 1stCentral I had a quote which was £200 less than my renewal I'm 85 years old
I clicked the box asking for a black box policy and on reading the policy I found no terms relating to a black box so I phoned them and to my surprise there was no black box included
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Their net combined operating ratio for UK Motor was 80.5% meaning a margin of 19.5% and thats ignoring any investment income but they are a significant outlier with EY having put the market as a whole at 101.6%
Its worth noting that NCOR is based on earned premium and therefore the fact that Admiral's premiums grew significantly in the last year will have reduced their NCOR due to timing but that alone is far from explaining how they are out performing the market by so much.Another partial explanation will be that they are heavily reinsured but dont pass on the anciliary income from interest and other fees meaning claims numbers reduce due to the reinsurance but the income becomes proportionally larger because only the true premium is shared but the full premium is used in the calc of NCOR
Why does a a can of Heinz beans cost a different amount to a can of Tesco beans? Why does the cost of both vary depending on if I buy from a Tesco Extra or a Tesco Express? Why is Lidl a different price again?
With the above its even much easier because the cos of the goods are fixed when they buy them from their supplier. Insurance is covering the future claims you are going to have and so you cant just look at your contract to see the unit price but have to have actuarial models and expert judgement and inevitably if you give someone 5,000,000 lines of data and a calculator and ask them to guess what your claims costs are going to be in the next 12 months you are likely to get at least the same number of answers as the number of persons you ask and even more if anyone decides to give an average, bad year etc versions of the number.
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It's a scam.
No it is not. A scam would be where you paid the premium, and then found out they had just disappeared with your money and you had no insurance. Or when you claimed you found the company was uncontactable etc
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I'm getting the distinct feeling that the OP has decided that the whole motor insurance industry has taken agin him and that reasoned responses and explanations here are not registering - ergo it's a scam.
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I guess you are right.
Another issue with a lot of people is that they think they are better drivers than they are. I think something like 90% of male drivers think their driving is above average, which is of course mathematically impossible.
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I'm literally comparing like with like. Nothing has changed, all the same details, milage projection, voluntary excess, etc. Hence the reason I find it extremely distasteful to be facing bigger premiums when absolutely nothing has changed on my end except that I've aged from 40 to 41. Does that justify it?
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What you outlined = sharks
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I'll carry on trying - your details may not have changed but you are operating in a cohort of thousands of other motorists and an operating environment where repair and replacement costs have risen at a rate that is considerably greater than RPI. That's what's meant by pooled risk, you get coverage that might well pay out tens of thousands of pounds for your £700/year.
Have you got the figures for how many 41yo's wrapped their Audi A3's round a tree last year? The insurance companies do. They also know how much they cost to fix. That's how they price your premium.
Not a scam.
Go see a broker who specialises in motor, see how much they are able to reduce your quote. I'm betting they won't be able to.
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