Car Insurance

[Polkadotties]

My OH is trying to renew is car insurance. We haven't been in this house long, moved from a different house in the same small town. None of the 'big' companies are coming up in the search results.
I've entered my details and my insurance is jumping from about £300 to over £500!
Does this mean we live in an area where claims have been high?

Might be. Try using your old address to see how it compares

Some areas I believe are just rated differently, even if seem similar, and little difference in relatively recent car related claims.

Possibly moved to a new home, built on a new area, so not much of a record exists.

It may sound obvious but there should be a difference between a car being parked more securely in a garage, or on a driveway, rather than on a road, especially busy.

I had similar once, I asked my company over the telephone for an explanation on the cover price, and they just said its wot the underwriters are telling them - so I put it down to the 'dark arts' of insurance, but it did seem to fall more in line the next year.

There are over 50 rating factors involved these days. Best thing to do is phone up. Try AXA online too.
Could also be due to the rate in the Ogden Table being changed by the government in March (means that basically, insurers have to set more money aside for claims that could lead to lifetime payments). MSE also says insurance is going up.

The Ogden multiplier is probably going to be the biggest reason for the increase in motor premiums this year. As a really simplified over-view, if someone gets badily injured in a car accident, they work out the annual cost of care and multiply it by this Ogden number to calculate the lump sum that the insurer should pay out as compensation.
At the end of Feb this year, the government updated the table of these multipliers so now insurers are having to pay out twice as much as before (if not more) on large claims. They need to pass on the cost to consumers like us, otherwise they won't make any profit.
Personally, there's a view that these multipliers will be revised again in the future (they were before May's surprise election) so you never know, it might go down again next year.

It may sound obvious but there should be a difference between a car being parked more securely in a garage, or on a driveway, rather than on a road, especially busy.

Nowadays parking in a garage will be more expensive and on the road cheaper.