When taking out insurance of any kind the insurers calculate a rate, or premium, that is relevant to both the level of cover and your own personal circumstances. The criteria used to calculate this figure are largely the same across the insurance industry, the only differences basically being the weightings that each individual company gives to each individuals personal circumstances. This makes it extremely important that you, the customer, takes a decent amount of time to shop around, researching the market to find the policy most suited to your own needs.
There are numerous factors that an insurance company will take into account when constructing a policy. Amongst the most important of these are the intended drivers age, experience, occupation, driving history (including claims and convictions) along with the vehicle’s own specifications and also importantly, it’s permanent garage postcode. All of these details are taken into consideration by the insurance company and they use these to come up with, what to them, is a suitable premium rate. As previously mentioned these factors carry different amounts of importance to different insurance providers with quite a few insurers opting to create policies specifically aimed at certain groups of drivers, for example those above
a certain age, or indeed chose not to go near those in certain occupations.
Besides the often drastically different premiums offered by insurers the level of cover given is largely similar across the board with many only differing in the smaller details, as well as the premium rate! The most basic cover available (and indeed required by law) is what is known as ‘third-party’, where you are only covered for injury or damage to a third party’s person or property, with ‘third-party, fire and theft’ coming next on the way up the policy ladder and ‘comprehensive’, as the name would suggest being the most expensive and providing the policy holder with the widest cover available.
There are also other means of lowering your premium rate. Probably the most widely known, and most effective, method of having discounts applied to your premium is by accruing and building a no-claims discount. Typically beginning after the first claim-free year, the discount will usually start at around 30% and will increase over several years to anywhere between 65% and 75%. Amongst the other ways of lowering your premium is by increasing the voluntary excess applied to the policy or imposing strict driver restrictions.
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