Renewing Your Car Insurance Car insurance renewal, for many, can be a painful experience, financially. It’s not unusual to get your renewal notice and find your annual quote has gone up for no given reason, whatsoever. The reason for this is many insurance companies take advantage by giving automated renewals, where your premium goes up and you find yourself insured for another year, because it’s made so easy.
These days it’s hard to avoid a smartly-dressed market or opera singer, on your television, advertising their respective price comparison sites. For many motorists, these sites are the first port of call in getting the cheapest car insurance. However, this isn’t the only way of getting the lowest premium. Here we give a few additional tips to try to reduce your annual insurance bill:
Haggle with your current insurer: If you’ve been keeping your driving record clean and want to stick with your insurer, then why not haggle with them? As long as your insurer isn’t an online only one, why not shop around, find a cheaper, comparable quote, and see if your car insurance renewal company will price match it. After all if you’ve been a good customer, why would they not want to go that extra mile to keep you?
Look at insurer’s websites directly Insurers have to pay price comparison sites to be featured and, unfortunately, this can often be passed onto the customer. You might find it cheaper to go direct. Also, multicar policies are yet to be featured on price comparison sites. Some insurers, such as Direct Line, don’t feature on price comparison sites, at all, so it’s always worth checking these sites too and make sure you’re not missing out on the best deal.
Visit a broker or insurance company on the high street Brokers, basically, do all the leg-work for you by comparing different insurance companies on your behalf. This is ideal for specialist vehicles or circumstances; however you are limited to the insurance companies the broker deals with. Of course, there are factors to consider that will reduce your premium as well, including: - Giving an accurate annual mileage - Locking your car in your garage at night - If you work shifts, see if your insurer gives a discount for not driving at peak times
- Telematics, that monitor your driving style, are available to all motorists, not just new drivers. Ask your insurer if they can do discount for you using telematics
Reducing your mileage When buying a policy, a question that always gets asked is what your annual mileage is. For insurers, people who do a lot of miles are more at risk of getting in an accident than someone who drives to the shops and back, obviously, thus tend to get higher premiums. Many motorists may fib about their mileage in order to get a lower quote. Insurers have begun to catch onto this, resulting in innocent motorists doing genuinely low miles seeing an increase in their own premiums. There are now insurers specialising in “low mileage policies.” The way this works is very similar to how young drivers get cheaper premiums; through telematics. The insurers give you a GPS box to install in your car and monitor your mileage so that you can keep your low premiums. Whether you already do low mileage or are considering reducing your car use, it is definitely something to consider.
Increasing Your Excess Agreeing to increase your excess may also be something to consider. To put it simply, the excess is the minimum amount you will contribute towards repairs. Many insurers require a compulsory excess, which will be stated in the quote, then there’s the voluntary excess, which you can choose and can be nil if this doesn’t have a detrimental impact on your premium. Note that if increasing your voluntary excess has a positive effect on your premium, you should ensure that you can comfortably pay the excess, plus any compulsory excess (if applicable). [Source: http://www.thecarpeople.co.uk/blog/CarInsurance]