Can’t get car insurance for 18 year old son - anyone else having this issue?

[Picklemeyellow]

DS18 passed his test a year ago and has been driving his own car since then.

All year he has been insured with a black box. Has had no issues with his driving, no convictions, penalties etc and drives well.

However, his insurance is up for renewal and his current insurer has said he doesn’t meet their criteria and therefore can not insure him this year.

We are now struggling to find an insurer. We’ve tried a few comparison sites and they are quoting ridiculous amounts, at least £400 per month (currently paying £180 per month). Other companies we have called are repeating the same, that he doesn’t meet the criteria etc.
I’ve just called my insurer, Direct Line to see about getting him on my insurance but again he doesn’t meet the criteria, the guy I spoke to at Direct Line has said it’s because the insurance will be way more than the value of the car and it’s not worth them insuring him.

What on earth can he do? He is a very careful, competent driver and has had no issues with the black box. He drives a 16 year old, 1.4ltr Fiesta which has had no modifications etc. It’s book value is only £800.

He has just been offered an apprenticeship in an industry he has wanted to get into all year and needs his car to get to and from work (it’s 30 miles away and not on a public transport route). I don’t know what we can do.

Can anyone recommend any insurance companies that we may have missed?

@DipsAndSplits your incredibly lucky you weren't caught out.
Insurance companies do look out for people being fraudulent. Do you honestly think it would wash that you were the main driver of multiple cars?

I can see someone being the main driver of multiple cars if they were super rich, Oh yes I'm the main driver of both the ferrari, and the audi, The Ferrari doesn't go out in the rain nor does it fit the shopping.

But I can't really see that washing if they are both everyday type cars.

I second Tesco, my partner, although he is 32, only learnt to drive last year and our current insurer hiked ours right up. Tesco was very reasonable but I wonder whether age is also a factor.

He’s training to be a mechanic and is always tinkering around with cars, so the age of the car isn’t an issue for him it’s the money grabbing insurance companies.

You’re the fool throwing money away, because you/he are not insured and you are paying money for non-valid insurance.

The insurance was perfectly valid, after all, they paid out when It was crunched on my gatepost.
I doubt they would have paid out for the repair if it hadn't have been valid.

@DipsAndSplits it was only 'valid' because you were lucky enough not to get caught. But you clearly have no shits to give about committing fraud.

OP: 'money-grabbing insurers'- erm no. They are barely making anything on car insurance at the moment due to increased cost of repairs. But hey, lets all bash insurance companies eh.

A small claim no doubt and not worth detailed investigation. If they’d taken out a bus stop full of children in rush hour you can guarantee the investigation would’ve nailed you and your kid would’ve been fucked beyond belief. You’d risk ruining your kid to save a few quid?

That’s the issue. Mechanics and those who tweak cars are high risk……..

My ds doesn’t ‘tweak’ cars at all and neither do any of the other mechanics in our family. That’s quite a sweeping statement there!

But the algorithm doesn't know that.

I always wonder how much the profession changes the insurance quote

Unfortunately I think it's due to his job, dd had the same because apparently people doing her job are notorious for bad driving and tinkering with their cars - she doesn't and is a good driver. Her insurance dropped when she she got a pcp on a new car, apparently because statistically she'll take better care of it

We’ve only put down that he’s an apprentice.

cakeorwine the drop down menus just state apprenticeship, not what kind though.

I honestly think it’s the actual car more than anything, as I mentioned earlier, when we put my car in (a 1.6 Mini, which is insurance group 19) it was a lot cheaper than his Fiesta.

Fair enough.

Did You put yourself and your dh as additional drivers? This will bring the quote down too.

Car insurance has skyrocketed for some unkown reason. DS1 is 29, has 11yrs no claims, yet his has gone up by £350 this year. He tried Direct Line, they wanted £2500, he paid £650 last year. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

It's not for 'some unknown reason'

www.adrianflux.co.uk/blog/2023/12/insurance-pricing-faqs/

@TheFairyCaravan our insurance both cars on the same policy was about double this year to last year. And none of the comparison site could match it.

Even the house policy went wild!

We did.

Part of the reason insurance is going wild is down to claims costs, parts shortages, people need replacement hire cars for longer and hire car companies are price gouging because it’s a big bad insurance company, right?

it also doesn’t help that last year (year before?) the FCA stopped insurance companies from offering the same customer a lower price at new business than they’d get at renewal. I think the idea was to bring renewal costs down and mean that people wouldn’t need to shop around. What it actually means is that insurance companies were historically losing money on the first year of insurance to entice customers in, hoping they could claw the money back by slowly increasing the premium to what it actually costs as lots of people don’t shop around if their premium has only gone up a bit.

now they can’t do that, everyone is finding out what insurance really costs. A lot of insurance companies are struggling, they’re certainly not raking it in.

Yes as @MindHowYouGoes says, before the changes to stop price walking it was always possible to find a good deal by shopping around - eventually if you put the work in you'd find a firm who wanted to expand into your demographic who'd give you a cheap price (ie one that they expect to lose money on).

Obviously that meant that older, less tech savvy, less mentally able customers were subsidising people like all of us on this thread: relatively tech-literate, on the ball. So it wasn't fair and I agree that it needed to change, but it's hit young drivers pretty hard at a time when rates have gone up anyway due to the parts crisis.

My daughter had a 1.4 polo when she first passed her test at 17 and was with Ticker until we sold the car when she went to Uni. They were who all of her friends used as well.

We leased a brand new car, £210 a month, and the insurance is £1000 per year, with 3 added drivers on, in her name though
may be worth looking at

Was interested how much premiums have gone up for new drivers in our area so enter ds's 1L 2014 Fiesta and put him in as a new 17 year old driver.

Annual cost was £1,560 (without black box) which is about £450 more than 2 years ago when he did pass. So a big increase, but not the silly numbers some people are being quoted.