Car insurance : more expensive with baby!

[starnon]

I'm trying to get renewal quotes for my insurance. Last year I was paying over £500 which I reckoned was ridiculous for someone over 30 with a diesel estate. It's more than I was paying for my Eunos track car and that was a Japanese import!

Hoping that it would drop this year, all my quotes are now around £700! It really is taking the pee as, on the face of it, the car is just an old diesel family basher and not a Bently.

To make things worse, when I change the settings to 'Married' with 'Child' (as happened over the last year!) the premiums jump by over £100!

Where is the logic in any of this?

 

[crazypainter]

same thing happenned on my home insurance by the addition of a baby.So I can kind of understand it with home insurance as they can cause accidents and damage, well not at 12 weeks old but anyway. However, with car insurance surely the thinking would be that you are more likely to drive more safely if you have a child on board and that should bring it down. Car insurance doesnt really make sense anyway, its what ever reason they can add in toget the premiums up

 

[ex911driver]

They think the driver will be distracted easily with a Baby/child in the Car.

 

[Mike.M]

Mine went down with my son declared and wife as a named drive even if she will not drive the car in fear of curbing my wheels LOL.

£440ish all in fully comp but is a saloon, but that should not matter.

Must be the post code lottery

 

[skyinsurance]

Try an insurer where you can actually speak to a human being.

 

[Springer*]

Hmm, a lot of cobblers being quoted here...

All insurers use existing stats to try and decipher what profiles of people pose higher risks than others. This is why they ask all of the personal lifestyle questions at the time of quoting. A lot of it is nonsense really, but some insurers really do tailor their quotes to certain types of individual and try and avoid others.

Because of cost cutting and the public obsession with wanting everything to be done in the blink of an eye, online or via smart phones etc, insurers have packaged up insurance policies so that they can be quickly administered and sold with minimum fuss. The problem with this is that all of us are different and too many assumptions need to be made in order to try and categorise us all in boxes that fit and those that don't.

Where possible you need to try and discuss your cover with an insurer that doesn't employ darleks that work from crib sheets and have no common sense. This is where brokers (like me) are making something of a come back because so many people get sick of the call centre black and white approach to insurance cover.

There is no way that someone who is married and has a child is a higher risk than someone who isn't. They don't think that someone with a child is distracted when at the wheel. If anything, someone with a child in the car will drive far more carefully. If entering yourself as married and with a child seems to make the premiums jump up, perhaps there is another reason for the increase. Such as, does the named driver have accidents/convictions? Are they under 30?

Many insurers like risks where there are named drivers, simply because statistically, these have performed better than "Insured Only Driving" risks. So its worth a bit of trial and error when online quote engines.

Your best bet is to shop around on the likes of GoCompare or Money Supermarket and such like. If your car is non-standard then you have to understand that 99% of motor products online cannot cater for this and you will need to speak to a broker over the telephone that is receptive to such risks.

Insurers have been hugely stung by personal injury claims and ambulance chasers in recent years and this is why premiums have gone up. In 2010 on average, for every £1 insurers collected in premiums, they paid out £4 in claims. Insurance companies are businesses that are in it to make money. It doesn't take Einstein to work out that a business operating those kinds of losses can't survive.

It really does pay to shop around with motor insurance these days and multi-car policies are certainly all the rage at the moment with the likes of Admiral and Direct Line. Definitely worth a look if you fit their profile.

J

 

[starnon]

I've now been sorted out with a reasonable premium with Skyinsurance!

 

[starnon]

Springer, regarding the child/wife changes to the quote, when I was using a couple of comparison websites I found that by changing the options of 'child under 16' and 'married/partner' was making the quote go up and down relatively (as I checked back and forth, editing the details).

 

[simon.m]

the bes thing to do is add a named driver to the car this will drop the price think it took 100 off mine just putting my gf on and she will not drive my car any way lol

 

[RaverA4]

I used to work in insurance & yes it is more expensive if you put down that you have any under 16's in the household...

 

[stu_m]

****** hell and I was complaining about paying £320 for me and the missus!!

 

[simon.m]

i think its bull**** they put it up if you have kids that should show them you will not be driving like a **** and put it down if any thing

 

[marktdisport]

I used to work in insurance & yes it is more expensive if you put down that you have any under 16's in the household...

Do you know the answer to this raverA4....... You would think married and kids would bring down the premium being more grown up etc

 

[RaverA4]

Do you know the answer to this raverA4....... You would think married and kids would bring down the premium being more grown up etc

Apparently your classed as higher risk as they could distract u when your driving, that's one of the reasons, I've also heard about quite a lot of claims because of kids ramming there bikes etc into the side of the car!

 

[rjm180]

I thought it was related to the potential higher cost of injury claims due to having children in the vehicle. When our first child was born a few years ago my premium went up too.

 

[RaverA4]

I thought it was related to the potential higher cost of injury claims due to having children in the vehicle. Mine too went up a few years ago when I had my first child.

Your right, that's a sort of follow on reason from them distracting you, there's tons of reasons why they load the premium for certain things, I used to laugh when people would say they only did 1000 miles per year thinking it would lower the premium, when in fact it actually increases it

 

[fallmonk]

Up till last august i had a 1.8 Turbo sport A4 was paying £700+ bought the currant A4 cab 3.0LTR my insurare at the time (post office) wanted to DOUBLE my price !!!!!!!!
Eventualy got it down to £500, BUT was really peeed at the post office had to give them a month up front and a cancelation fee cost about £250 all in , but was still cheaper than staying with them .

 

[AlexGSi2000]

Im paying £1870 for my insurance!

Im 24, 6 years driving, 6 years NCB, no points.

High risk postcode area! - even though Im not aware of any cars being stolen around here in a long time.

 

[Mike.M]

Ouch! Post code lottery again.........i have never paid that much.

When I was 24 I had an S3 and that was £600 fully comp, full NCB with 9 points........which are all gone now thankfully

 

[BahnStormer77]

35years old, I have no points, 10 years no-claims bonus (never had an at-fault claim and NOTHING since I was 21 and a truck changed lanes through me on the motorway), I live in a VERY safe part of Surrey, car parked on the drive, <8k miles per year, etc.

Insurance has gone up from £303/year 4 years ago to £480/year since the arrival of two sprogs.... even though I'm 4 yrs older and have 4 extra yrs no-claims...

 

[VagCabby]

Im paying £1870 for my insurance!

Im 24, 6 years driving, 6 years NCB, no points.

High risk postcode area! - even though Im not aware of any cars being stolen around here in a long time.

Ouch, I'm 24, 7 years driving and 6 years ncb (was on my parents policy for my first year.) No accidents no points £875 with admiral and I live in a croydon post code although I live in the sticks lol

 

[Avantsline]

I found it better when I declared my son, A4 1.8t Sline quattro 190 Avant with 3 years ncb and 24yrs old, SDP & commuting for £700 fully comp.

 

[@udi A3]

I was once fined a total of £220 in fines and costs for driving with no insurance tax or mot. I havent been stopped in at least 5 years by police, and for 2 of those i was driving under a trade policy the majority of the time, where there was no record of the car being insured on the database.

Now im not suggesting people dont insure there cars, but it infuriates me to know I could have saved thousands and risk a 6-8 point and chump change fine for the last 5 years. There is absolutely no incentive for some people to bother with insurance and thats possibly a factor in the price hike.

If the courts changed the punishment and increased the fines etc and policed it better ( I drove between 2002-2008 without correct liscence, was pulled several times upto about 2007 and not once was my liscence validity questioned), we might see insurance premiums drop. I found out my liscence was revoked when calling DVLA to check my points had been cleared!

 

[Springer*]

Some interesting replies here.

There's no hard and fast rule on whether having kids or being married or adding additional drivers increases or decreases your costs. It all depends on the individual insurer concerned. They use standard marketing techniques to try and find their ideal profile of customer and deliberately pitch their pricing towards that. Some insurers will like people with kids and others maybe not so much. That's why comparison sites do work quite well for those who find price is the most important factor of purchasing cover.

The way I see it is that when buying insurance you are paying for a claims service. After all, you only ever find out how good your insurer and your cover is when you have to claim. It is also true that you get what you pay for.

As far as uninsured drivers are concerned, I feel that they are the scum of the universe. It is down to them that insurance premiums are as high as they are. Uninsured drivers cost the insurance industry billions each year and the money needs to come from somewhere - i.e. us.

Uninsured vehicles on the roads should be seized, impounded and crushed - without exception. It scares me silly that there are 3 million+ uninsured vehicles on UK roads, usually with no MOT and driven by people who are often not able to drive, while I might be with my kids in the car.

Yeah sure, an insurance bill is something we'd all rather do without, but its the law. If you want to drive, you have to insure your vehicle or make sure that you have adequate cover in place. There's no excuse.

J

 

[BahnStormer77]

Takes the Mickey when it seems that the fine is only a few hundred Pounds for not having insurance... but the insurance is often 3-4 TIMES as much (assuming you buy it before you've done anything wrong, like drive without insurance).

Openly flouting the rules and driving without insurance (without any seriously believable mittigating circumstances*) should be a driving ban and driving without a license should mean a proper criminal conviction and sentence.

*I recently drove for 10 days without insurance, completely by accident! After I had switched over to Admiral multi-car for a year and then back to a single car, they had shifted my renewal date to the day I added the second car, NOT the day I bought my main car - I should have spotted that, so I'm not blameless, but then they proceeded to misplace three letters in the post (my upcoming renewal notice, my new docs and my notification of failed payment) and then the final notification of insurance cancellation took a day short of three WEEKS to get to me! For a company that phones you as soon as soon as you hit their website to try to close a deal, they were pretty chy of picking up the phone and telling me there was a problem!

Enough of the sob-story - the bit I wanted to update people on was that you HAVE to use the MoneySaving Expert guide - it just saved me over £700!!!

LINK

edit:

£303 four years ago, then about £350, £450 and latest renewal came in at £589 - I thought it was £480 at first!! (only addition has been one non-fault scooter accident)... and with the new provider, I had to drop my folks off the insurance, which is a pain as it's great to let them take the car if they want to take the kids out (car seats, etc) and they drive A6's, so it's a pretty similar car..

Then when I went to insure my new car (A6 Avant 3.0TFSI - admittedly the perfect car for profiling people up or down!):
Audi insurance came in at £1080 for me, but >£1300 to add my parents.
Current insurer was around £900 just for me, £1100 to include my parents.
And MoreThan were £411, including my parents!

They've already shown some worrying tendancies to downvalue the car, etc, but with Audi's gap-insurance, I should be covered!