To think my car insurance should have gone down in 12 years

[squaredcircletriangle]

I am still paying nearly £800 a year for the same car I have insured for the last 12 years.
It is older now but I would have thought for a 40 year old who walks to work, has never made a claim or got any points would have been paying less.
I used to think I paid more because I was young but sadly that’s no longer the case.
Does this seem excessive or about right?
I only have a small 1.6 focus.
I know I can shop around but wanted to know if that sounded reasonable first.

That sounds expensive, have you ever shopped around? After my first few years of no claims my insurance dropped right down and has stayed there, I wouldn’t expect to pay £800 for even 8 years let alone 12.

You definitely need to shop around. There is no reward for loyalty in the insurance industry. That you walk to work though is only relevant to the insurance companies if you remove commuting cover and just go for SDP (social, domestic and pleasure) cover. DW pays £140 per year for a similar type of car (fully comprehensive). You're paying more than my 23yr old DD who has less experience, no claims history.

Mine's £150 a year for a 2012 Yeti parked in a private driveway in a naice area, professional occupation, work from home. The highest I ever paid was about £400 in my first year of driving but that was 30 years ago and it went down a lot after one year.

But we can't really say why yours is so expensive, so you're probably best off using a comparison site or two to get an idea of whether it is.

I check the comparison sites in the order specified by Money Saving Expert even when my renewal is lower than last year's premium. I frequently switch insurer. It's not time consuming to use comparison sites once you've done it the first time, your info is saved so in subsequent years you just refresh. Takes me under 10 minutes to do 4 sites. Switching is pretty quick and painless too if you do it via the comparison site.

Even if your renewal isn't due yet it might be cheaper to cancel mid year (check what the cancellation fee is) and go with another insurer if you can get a decent quote.

I seriously can't believe you've come here and said 'well I know I could shop around...'

You need to do that. If you're with the same insurer of course there's no incentive to them to reduce your premiums. Even to go back with them as a new customer I bet you could half your premium.

Go! Save some cash!!

I dont think insurers are allowed to offer you a cheaper price as a new customer anymore

Also no one can say if the premium is too high as we know nothing about @squaredcircletriangle s circumstances. The most we can say is that until you try the comparison sites there's no way to know if you could save any money

Each insurer has their own individual risk model. The motor and household markets in the UK are very competitive, far more competitive than some European markets, therefore it is always worth checking the wider market as a different company may assess risk differently and therefore you may get a different price. In current times, there is a greater emphasis on rewarding long serving customers, but my advice would always be to shop around. I would note that since 2022 FCA rules have ensured that as a renewing customer you must get as least the same deal as a new customer. There are considerable cost pressures in both motor and household. Since covid the cost of replacement parts and building materials have gone up sharply and remain high.

If that's a major service then its cheap! My husband is a mechanic so I know what they charge.

What’s the price of a service and your husband being a mechanic got to do with OP asking about insurance costs?

We have two cars, live in London and don't pay anything like that amount for either! If the price goes up more than we expect it to, DH phones up and haggles. He will phone other companies and get a quote that is lower and then tell the original company to see if they will lower theirs. We have basically gone between two of the main companies over the years.

You could also check what you are insured for, third party, comprehensive, any driver, age of driver, amount of voluntary excess etc to see if you actually need all the cover you have.

Does your husband not know about comparison sites? Why waste time haggling when you can get all the quotes in moments. All sensible people do this, don't let him fool you into thinking he's got special insurance skills 😁

I pay £450 for a newish Puma and am your age and have NCB. You are being fleeced.

I also work in insurance, we write high end motor but the principles are the same. Where you live is a huge factor and with that vehicle and that premium I'm guessing it's going to be the driving factor for you.

However, you absolutely should shop around. It's a soft market in insurance right now so you should be able to get a better deal by moving insurer.

Make sure you aren't covered for a higher mileage than you're doing - you might be covered for something standard like 12,000 miles a year but if you're only doing 6k that's a much lower risk.

However, as pp says, be wary of the cheapest basic policy. Insurance doesn't matter until you need to make a claim, and then it suddenly really, really matters. Read the fine print and choose an insurer with a good claims satisfaction score.

This is correct. The regulator stopped this a while back - insurers can't give you a worse price than a new customer.

Simply put, customer loyalty is not a factor in pricing because it doesn't impact the risk being underwritten.

If you've been with that insurer for 15 years or 15 months, the cost of the claim you might make against them is the same.

At the level of insurance I work in (£20k+ pa policies for home and motor etc) we will get our underwriters to do their best pricing possible to try to retain our clients. But that's because our business model is very different from a mass market insurer - we have a far smaller number of policies but each policy is £££.

A mass market car insurance company doesn't do that because a) nothing is manually underwritten, it's all just system priced, and b) losing your policy doesn't matter.