Stung for NCD on Two Cars

you have an insurance policy that has x years ncd. If you want to use that ncd on your new car then the ncd moves to your new policy. - this then leaves no ncd for your old car
what made you think you could use the same ncd from one policy on multiple policies?

Clifford_Pope wrote: »

Because the NCD is a measure of your safety as a driver, not on the propensity of individual cars to have accidents?

Not really. NCD is a marketing gimmick - nothing more, nothing less.

In the dim and distant past it was a form of loyalty bonus intended to encourage customers (particularly the good ones who didn't make claims) to keep renewing, and the idea was that you would only get it if you stayed with the same insurer year after year.

Well, that went the way of all loyalty bonuses when insurers realised that if they wanted to attract new customers, they would have to offer to match their rivals' NCDs. Much as Tesco might offer to accept Sainsburys' money off vouchers from time to time - not because they're under any moral or legal obligation to accept them, but because it's a good way to poach their competitor's customers.

However if you're not renewing a policy - for example because you're insuring a second car for the first time - you won't have an existing insurer who is offering you a discount, so there is no incentive for another insurer to offer you one. Viewed like this many of the oddities of NCD make sense. Complaining that you're not allowed to use it on more than one car at once is a bit like getting a "£10 off your next shop" voucher from Tesco, then complaining that you can't use it twice at two different supermarkets.

That's the theory at any rate. In practice of course NCD has been rather uncomfortably crowbarred into the more general ratings system, which is why if you ask many insurers will offer to match your NCD on a second car, or give you a roughly equivalent discount. Not all will though and there are no industry-wide rules on whether they have to do it, any more than there are rules on how many loyalty points supermarkets have to give you.

The system IS a little silly, but it's become ingrained to the point where people treat their NCD as if it was a basic human right, or the most valuable thing they have ever owned (you can even get insurance for it!), so the first insurer to scrap it would immediately lose all their customers. But of course it's neither a human right nor the most valuable thing you ever own - it's just a marketing gimmick that got out of hand.