Car insurance

[Rich B]

Man - you guys are still paying peanuts!

You haven't exactly helped yourself with choice of cars and claim history....!

[GG.]

Man - you guys are still paying peanuts!

You haven't exactly helped yourself with choice of cars and claim history....!

That doesn't explain why my wife's Smart is £1,000 p.a.! Unfortunately location is the driving factor. No-one living in London would get anywhere near the 3-500 range a lot of you seem to be paying.

It will be 3 years since my most recent claim in November so will be interesting to see if I get any reflection for that. Many insurers look back 5 years but some are 3. I'm not hopeful...

[Rich B]

Man - you guys are still paying peanuts!

You haven't exactly helped yourself with choice of cars and claim history....!

That doesn't explain why my wife's Smart is £1,000 p.a.! Unfortunately location is the driving factor. No-one living in London would get anywhere near the 3-500 range a lot of you seem to be paying.

It will be 3 years since my most recent claim in November so will be interesting to see if I get any reflection for that. Many insurers look back 5 years but some are 3. I'm not hopeful...

again, your choice of where to live!

[GG.]

You haven't exactly helped yourself with choice of cars and claim history....!

That doesn't explain why my wife's Smart is £1,000 p.a.! Unfortunately location is the driving factor. No-one living in London would get anywhere near the 3-500 range a lot of you seem to be paying.

It will be 3 years since my most recent claim in November so will be interesting to see if I get any reflection for that. Many insurers look back 5 years but some are 3. I'm not hopeful...

again, your choice of where to live!

Well... kind of. Generally people live within a reasonable proximity to where they work.

Let me cut off the next response before it comes: "your choice of where to work!!!!"

The only point I was making here is that although prices are increasing in percentage times - as a relative cost, car insurance does not seem to be that prohibitively expensive in many other areas of the country. Really only in line with broadband or cable TV costs. I would have thought a lot more people would be cresting 1,000 p.a. by now if you have a performance car or live in an urban area.

[Rich B]

But you're living proof that Range Rovers get stolen in London - you can't expect £40k (or whatever figure it was) payouts for regular crime hotspots without the costs going up to pay for them.

[GG.]

Yes I agree. My comment was that the market as a whole does not seem that crazy although it has risen a lot in percentage terms. In absolute terms it is no higher than many of people's other regular bills - probably half or less than gas/electric now.

If I have an area of complaint it is that insurers methodology in setting premia is a very blunt instrument. If the first RR gets stolen in 2 weeks and you have the next one for over 2 years without getting stolen, the probability of this one getting stolen must now be dramatically lower (hint: it is because it has two trackers (LR and third party) plus a no tag no start immobiliser and a wheel lock - I would wager the likelihood of it being stolen is now no higher than anything else) but they don't seemingly take that into account at all but will take all individual specific negative factors into account...

[Sundayjumper]

And city salaries are higher than provincial salaries. It all goes into the mix.

[GG.]

Only reason I'm here!

[Rich B]

Yes I agree. My comment was that the market as a whole does not seem that crazy although it has risen a lot in percentage terms. In absolute terms it is no higher than many of people's other regular bills - probably half or less than gas/electric now.

If I have an area of complaint it is that insurers methodology in setting premia is a very blunt instrument. If the first RR gets stolen in 2 weeks and you have the next one for over 2 years without getting stolen, the probability of this one getting stolen must now be dramatically lower (hint: it is because it has two trackers (LR and third party) plus a no tag no start immobiliser and a wheel lock - I would wager the likelihood of it being stolen is now no higher than anything else) but they don't seemingly take that into account at all but will take all individual specific negative factors into account...

they do give No Claims Discount for those years of it being safe, along with the various factors they do quiz you on like trackers/imobilisers/etc...

I agree that insurance has definitely gone up in recent times and that it sucks, but your massive payout, whilst 100% not your fault makes you one of the bad investments to them and hence you're being made to pay for it!

[GG.]

Yes I agree. My comment was that the market as a whole does not seem that crazy although it has risen a lot in percentage terms. In absolute terms it is no higher than many of people's other regular bills - probably half or less than gas/electric now.

If I have an area of complaint it is that insurers methodology in setting premia is a very blunt instrument. If the first RR gets stolen in 2 weeks and you have the next one for over 2 years without getting stolen, the probability of this one getting stolen must now be dramatically lower (hint: it is because it has two trackers (LR and third party) plus a no tag no start immobiliser and a wheel lock - I would wager the likelihood of it being stolen is now no higher than anything else) but they don't seemingly take that into account at all but will take all individual specific negative factors into account...

they do give No Claims Discount for those years of it being safe, along with the various factors they do quiz you on like trackers/imobilisers/etc...

I agree that insurance has definitely gone up in recent times and that it sucks, but your massive payout, whilst 100% not your fault makes you one of the bad investments to them and hence you're being made to pay for it!

It was certainly a bad investment for that insurer on that car, but the interesting thing is that it related to a different MY of car, with different features, no tag based immobiliser and no prolonged history of ownership before it was stolen. The current car is a different model, with different key tech (and has now been upgraded by the factory) and has been owned for a significant period providing actual evidence of lower risk separate from just "any RR".

If you were to judge risk of theft for the first one, I'd put it at as high as 80% whereas this one is probably 10% (with the extra security) but there is no real reflection of that in the pricing. From a risk profile, you could make a case that it is as different to the first pre-facelift one as the Porsche is and that is under 1/3 the premium for a driver with the same claims profile and the same address.

My expectation is that as a proportion of the whole premium, a very large percentage is just based on what "the market", i.e. all RRs in London is doing rather than individual profiles. I've seen some videos posted by brokers that state insurers will in reality price with a 3 year lag to aggregated claims for that vehicle in that area - i.e. it is a very simplistic statistical model - which I guess makes total sense as they have neither the time, money or inclination to really accurately assess risk on an individual basis.

The real smoking gun there being that the current premium is double what the first renewal was after the theft - i.e. they're clearly just looking at the market... with a significant time lag to boot.

[IanF]

Did that £150 pcm insurance contribution from JLR extend to your car GG? Or was that just for new purchases?

[GG.]

No - its only for new purchases unfortunately.

I ran a quote on a new L460 and that was £30k p.a. so 1,500 wouldn't touch the sides

Again - no logic to the new ones being triple the price to insure of the old ones other than they're just effectively blacklisted - possibly until there are a few years of claim information to show what is likely to happen to them.

[Mito Man]

At £30k I'd want someone to steal my car so that I can think of the insurance as good value for money

[Sundayjumper]

THIRTY-FCUKING-GRAND ????

[GG.]

£31,086.72 through "Go Girl"

The one caveat to that is that I had been fiddling around with the comparison site for a while at that point and I think (and i've never had this before) that some fraud checks may have been flashing up as I subsequently did one for a Defender and it only gave me funny insurers and quoted £3,600 whereas I'd had run one before for the same car and it was £2,500 through someone normal like Admiral.

X5s and GLEs of similar vintages all seem similarly ridiculous. The only one that comes in at a sensible-ish price is an XC 90 (which I don't want)

[Jobbo]

SJ, who do you use for insurance? I’m thinking it’s time to get a broker to find me a fleet policy rather than adding cars ad hoc. Got to get a whole new policy for my MX5 otherwise.

[Mito Man]

£31,086.72 through "Go Girl"

The one caveat to that is that I had been fiddling around with the comparison site for a while at that point and I think (and i've never had this before) that some fraud checks may have been flashing up as I subsequently did one for a Defender and it only gave me funny insurers and quoted £3,600 whereas I'd had run one before for the same car and it was £2,500 through someone normal like Admiral.

X5s and GLEs of similar vintages all seem similarly ridiculous. The only one that comes in at a sensible-ish price is an XC 90 (which I don't want)

The car insurance sites now seem to use similar software to flight and hotel booking sites. Keep running quotes and the prices increase. Use different browsers, make a separate email for each time (Apple's hide my email feature is good for this), use incognito mode etc.

[Sundayjumper]

SJ, who do you use for insurance? I’m thinking it’s time to get a broker to find me a fleet policy rather than adding cars ad hoc. Got to get a whole new policy for my MX5 otherwise.

It’s been Reis, a competition car specialist that also covered road cars, but when I called to cancel the Bentley policy they warned me they’re changing their approach and re-focussing on competition cars. I’d already figured this, when I bought the Ferrari last July they weren’t competitive, and same again with the Smart. Turns out they were bought out in June of last year so it seems this is the direction of the new ownership. They’re now only doing road cars on a 1:1 basis - if you have one competition car they will cover one road car. Two for two, etc.

So right now the Ferrari, 996 & Range Rover are all with Admiral. I didn’t even bother getting quotes from Reis for the 996 & RR but on the Ferrari they were double what Admiral wanted *and* needed a tracker *and* wouldn’t put Gavster on the policy.

My renewal is at the end of July. I expect I’ll leave the Compact with them as that’s genuinely a competition car and move the rest to Admiral.

[Sundayjumper]

And just to add, this is a shame because Reis have been great to deal with. You speak to a real person and have their direct phone number & email address to communicate with, send documents etc.

[dan]

I'm with REIS but have a specific motorsport industry policy and have to say its brilliant, covers all my cars and driving other peoples cars, even on track.