Car insurance

The situation continues to develop and is likely to continue that way for the foreseeable future. Some of these changes may affect your car insurance. The most recent government advice is to stay in your home unless you have an essential reason to go outside. If you do need to drive at this time, you will still need insurance.

You need car insurance as it can provide you with cover if you’re involved in a car accident. It’s also a legal requirement if you own or drive a car, unless you declare the vehicle off-road (SORN) and keep it on private property.

If you’re caught without car insurance, you could be fined a minimum of £300 and given six penalty points. If you end up in court, you might be given an unlimited fine and disqualified from driving.

If you’re new to driving, you’ll find your insurance is more expensive than for people with more driving experience. The reason for this is that new drivers are considered more of a risk by insurance providers. This is partly because of inexperience, but mainly because most new drivers are young drivers – and a quarter of young drivers will be involved in an accident in the first two years of being on the road.

There are ways you can reduce the cost of your insurance – telematics policies can be cheaper, for example.

Whether it’s better to pay for your premium annually or each month will depend on your circumstances.

Paying an annual lump sum is usually cheaper than paying monthly. A monthly payment plan could mean you pay more as you might be charged interest on the instalments.

The insurance provider will carry out a credit check if you want to pay for your car insurance monthly. Providers will also look at your credit score (a 'soft search') when you compare insurance quotes, but this is just to check your details and won’t affect your score.

See more on car insurance and credit checks

You can estimate your mileage by working out how many miles you drive every day or week, then adding them up to work out your annual use. Alternatively, check your MOT certificate or car service record, which will show how many miles you’ve driven. You can use this as a basis to calculate your future mileage.

The number of miles you drive per year can affect your car insurance premium. This is because the more you drive, the more of a risk the provider considers you to be. It’s important to be as accurate as you can when you estimate your mileage for your car insurance. If you guess and underestimate your mileage, it could invalidate your policy. If you overestimate you could end up paying more than you need to.

See more on annual mileage and car insurance

When you compare car insurance with us and enter your registration number, where possible we’ll give you a valuation figure based on the car’s market value at the time – the amount you’d receive if your car was written off. Alternatively, you can use a free online tool to find out your car’s current value or look at used-car listings to see the prices of similar models of a similar age, condition and mileage.

See more on how car values affect premiums

It depends on the insurance provider. When you compare with us, you can save your searches, but you won’t necessarily get the price that you saved when you come back to buy your policy. Some insurance quotes last as long as 60 days, but some can change at any point.

If you cancel within the 14-day cooling-off period, you might have to pay an admin fee but you’ll get a refund minus the days the policy was active for. If you cancel later on, you may have to pay cancellation fees and admin fees. You may or may not get a refund, depending on the circumstances and whether you pay for your policy annually or monthly.

Find out everything you need to know about cancelling car insurance

It’s almost certain that it will – in fact, your premium may go up even if you have an accident and don’t make a claim, because the insurance provider might consider there’s more of a risk of you being in another accident. If you’ve protected your no claims discount that shouldn’t be affected, but your basic premium is still likely to go up.

See more on how an accident can affect your car insurance premium.

The excess is the amount the policyholder has to pay towards a claim on their insurance. There are two elements to car insurance excess:

• Compulsory excess – this is set by the insurance provider. You might have to pay an additional compulsory excess if you drive a high-performance car or if you’re a young driver.
• Voluntary excess – this is the amount you agree to pay in addition to the compulsory excess. Agreeing a bigger voluntary excess can reduce the cost of your insurance, but you’ll need to make sure you can afford to pay it if you make a claim.

See more on car insurance excess

Telematics or ‘black box’ insurance uses technology to monitor the way you drive and transmits the data to your insurance provider. If you drive safely, it could lead to cheaper car insurance. Telematics works either through a GPS device – the black box – fitted in your car or a smartphone app. These record things like how you corner, brake, your speed and the time of day and how far you drive.

Black box insurance can be particularly useful for young and inexperienced drivers. It can give insurance providers evidence that you’re a safe driver and could reduce your premiums.

Find out about telematics insurance.

If you share your car with one of your parents, having them on your policy as a ‘named’ or additional driver could reduce your premium. But they mustn’t be on the policy as the main driver if they’re not. This is a type of fraud called fronting and is illegal.

A no claims bonus – also called a no claims discount or NCD – builds up every year you have car insurance without making a claim. You can accrue up to five years and sometimes more, depending on the insurance provider. Your NCD can cut the cost of your car insurance when you renew. You can also opt to protect it so that it’s not affected if you do make a claim.