Car insurance in the UK. Why you need it?
Car thefts in the United Kingdom have been on the rise, and so have repair costs, accidents, and the like. As such, it's a small wonder that all these factors have resulted in making the compulsory car insurance bill an important factor each time you fancied getting a new car or upgrading to a better one.
Each time you drive, you run the danger of denting and breaking your car as well as putting yourself and other people driving with you in peril. It's not just about responsible driving either, because accidents are unavoidable. Ergo, even though you want to get the cheapest insurance policy possible, this could hurt you financially and personally in the long run. A better way to cut insurance premiums is picking your car carefully, taking car of it regularly, and picking the appropriate cover.
One other major factor in cutting premiums is the place you're situated in. Be aware that inner cities are the most dangerous places for insurers, so premiums tend to be unavoidably costlier there. In the province, you get half the price. At any rate, you can avail of a small discount by simply parking your car inside the house where it's safe in the garage overnight. Depending on the insurance company, you can even sometimes get a discount from the annual mileage of your car.
Types of Car insurance in the UK
In regards to coverage types, here's a brief overview of the kinds of car insurance available:
- Comprehensive: This particular car insurance covers third party insurance (see below), fire, and theft as well as new for old replacement in the first year, coverage for damage to or loss of property inside your car, limited medical expenses, personal accident coverage, glass replacement for your windows and windscreen, and coverage for malicious or accidental damage to your car.
- Third Party: This is the United Kingdom's minimum legal level of insurance, wherein the first two parties are the driver and the insurance company. This policy covers damages related to injuries to others, particularly passengers or pedestrians, and damage to third-party property like another car or a fence.
- Third Party, Fire, and Theft: This policy covers all the liabilities described in its title. To be more specific, it also covers damages on your car from any attempts at vehicular arson or carjacking.
Price Comparison Sites
Price Comparison sites such a moneysupermarket.com, Gocompare.com, Tescocompare.com, Confused.com, Beatthatquote.com & Comparethemarket.com offer insurance and other price comparison service. Basicaly user just have to fill in one single form and it fetches quotes from many insurance companies and brokers. This practice can be time and money saving. However there are things which should be carefully checked with these price comparison websites.
In an experiment to get the cheapest possible car insurance quotes from six popular price comparison sites, there was no consistent price for a like-for-like car insurance quote. There were also significant discrepancies between the cheapest quotes on the six sites (uSwitch.com, MoneySupermarket.com, TescoCompare, GoCompare.com, Confused.com, and MoneyExpert.com) that were polled.
The problem here is that there was a lot of ambiguity when it came to compulsory excesses.This practice could prove to be incredibly expensive for the driver who's making a claim. For example, if you have an antique vehicle worth £600, there's no point in getting a voluntary excess of £300 if there's a compulsory excess of the same amount.
In conclusion, drivers should pick a site that warns about and shows on the result page both the voluntary and compulsory excesses in order to get an accurate picture of which of the sites offer the lowest quotes in order to avoid discrepancies and counterproductive excesses later on.
