So, let us explore all three of these to see how companies such as one sure insurance calculate their premiums.
How Our Vehicle Impacts Insurance Cost
The vehicle that you want to insure will very much determine the amount of the premium that you ultimately pay. This is because all UK insurers will place your vehicle into a group. The list they all work from will have pre-determined your vehicle’s group no matter which company you try. This will be the initial cost of your insurance before different discounts and incentives are applied to attract your business.
Insurance groups matter to insurance companies because they rank vehicles depending on their performance (engine size), safety features, and their cost to repair. This will all impact the potential claim value to be paid out in the event of an accident, fire, or theft. Vehicles boasting better performance levels will generally be owned by those with a desire for speed and insurers know this. Speed will invariably create a greater number of accidents and more damage in terms of repairs costs. Any safety features a car has fitted will mean that fewer small accidents are likely to be claimed for. Security features will make a vehicle a lower theft risk. Luxury top-of-the-range cars with all the singing and dancing features will be more time-consuming and costly for garages to repair. This cost will be passed on to insurers, so insurers have no choice but to pass it on to their policyholders by way of the premiums that they pay.
Drivers
We can have just ourselves driving, our partner too, and other named drivers if we so wish. If they are younger family members, then this could cost us dearly. But then, that is how we think of them.
It is not all bad news regarding the cost of insuring younger drivers because we can lower the costs by having higher excesses applied. Okay, we stand some of the risks of having to pay out in the event of claims, but perhaps we should put more faith in our children. Particularly if we have been part of the process that taught them to drive.
“Any driver” insurance is available that will allow, as it says, anyone to drive your vehicle that has your permission. It saves naming or needing to know the separate drivers in advance. This is not a way to find insurance more cheaply for your children because a lower age limit, usually over 25, will be set. Also, drivers over a certain age may come under restrictions. So, this makes it something to bear in mind more for middle age bands and where you are likely to have a lot of different people, perhaps family members or friends, driving your vehicle. In these instances, an “Any driver” policy could work out to be more cost-effective in the long run. As long as the people that you allow to drive your vehicle are all trustworthy and do not have a disastrous effect on your claims record.
Type of Cover
So, if our vehicle is of aging years, we have a choice of whether to insure it for Comprehensive cover or Third-Party Fire and Theft. Perhaps even Third Party Only if it has paid for itself many times over. This would lower your motor insurance costs and please the family budget. Comprehensive cover, however, will be insisted upon where there is a finance agreement in operation.
The advantage of having Comprehensive cover, apart from it covering damage to your vehicle as well as the other person’s, is that you will have access to windscreen replacement insurance for a small excess. To keep the cost down of having Comprehensive insurance, different excesses can be applied.
Basic insurance for Third Party is about your legal liability. Everyone who drives a vehicle on the road must have motor insurance to cover damage or injury to the other road user. Fire and Theft can then be added to cover a car or vehicle owner against acts of vandalism or theft.
In conclusion, when insuring a car, we should consider how the make and model of our vehicle, mainly the model, will affect our insurance premium. There are 50 designated insurance groups in all, and to end up with your vehicle ranked in a higher group, will mean paying more for your insurance. We should also consider that when we add younger drivers to a policy, we will pay considerably greater premiums. So, we need to think carefully about who we add to our policy. However, it can work out less to add our children to our policy than to take out a separate policy for them. Then, depending on how new or valuable our vehicle is, we can opt for either a Comprehensive or Third Party-type cover.
