How to Get Cheap Car Insurance Rates Without Reducing Your Cover

Everywhere you go these days you will hear the same word applied to car insurance. On the TV ads and commercials and on the radio........

Compare!

Well yes, you certainly do need to compare what you are spending your money on when it comes to car insurance, but as expert Dave Healey points out in the following article, there is a lot more to Comparing Car Insurance than what you are first led to believe by the giant car insurance 'price comparison' sites, whose horrible jingles regularly ring in your ears......


How to Get Cheaper Car Insurance Without Reducing Your Coverage

When you enter your details online and ask for a quote, the car insurance rating system returns a price for your coverage determined by the answers you give to the questions asked. This is exactly the same process as if you walked into a high street brokers or telephoned a company you found in say yellow pages. The difference online is that you are doing the work filling in the form or researching the market for yourself, saving the insurance company the cost of employing people to process your application.

Online car insurance is therefore nearly always a cheaper method of purchasing coverage as nearly all online motor insurance companies offer an immediate discount to the basic insurance rates, of at least ten percent for purchasing this way. To get the cheapest cover then, it is necessary nowadays to spend some time online.

The art to obtaining cheaper car insurance is found in a combination of first identifying a set of policies or companies that suit your particular insurance cover needs and then adjusting the factors within the preferred policy to tailor the price of it to your pocket.

Different companies ask different questions to assess your risk, but all ask a basic set of questions called rating factors. Although rating factors vary from policy to policy, the standardised method of rating a vehicle according to its risk group (engine size and cost to repair) and a driver by his age and experience, apply almost universally. When looking for cheaper insurance always answer the questions asked truthfully, in order not to invalidate your cover.

Your answers to the standard rating factor and risk questions should always be the same, as things such as your age or the type of car, do not change.

Identifying a company which is right for you is of particular importance as it is not desirable to reduce coverages to save on price. Getting cheaper premiums is about negotiating a price for the level of cover you desire. For example, reducing your coverage from comprehensive to third party fire and theft may save you a lot of money up front, but will cost you dearly in most cases in the event of a claim, especially if you are at fault!

A good place to start, if you have the time, to get an indication of what you are likely to pay, is to visit a car insurance price comparison site. These websites compare rates and policies, often from hundreds of different insurance suppliers. Some online systems particularly these so called aggregator or price comparison sites are more often obliged to ask more questions, so getting a cheaper quote can be time consuming. This is because certain of the insurance companies on the panel require differing information about the driver or the car, in order to return the quote. This obviously takes a lot longer to complete the quotation and purchasing processes where sometimes hundreds of policies are involved, however the time spent is rewarded with a list of competing companies offering a variety of quotes, giving you a very good indication of what you are likely to have to pay. These may not be the cheapest quotes you will find online, but being presented with various offers and options is a starting point for identifying cheaper car insurance.

If you like a look of a particular policy that you have found on a car insurance price comparison site, you can often save money by visiting the company's own website and applying direct. In order to ensure you get the full benefits of cheaper cover it is often necessary to remove all cookies from your browser window, before visiting the car insurance provider direct.

It is also worth remembering that many of the cheaper car insurance companies do not have their motor insurance products for sale on the price comparison sites, and many make a point of this direct exclusivity, in their advertising campaigns. These so called direct car insurance companies are also able to offer large discounts for purchasing their insurance because they cut the costs of production of the policy by cutting out the costs of the middleman, in the form of a price comparison site fee or car insurance brokers commission. The commission savings these direct insurers make by conducting business this way can then be passed onto their customers as cheaper car insurance premiums.

Another area to explore if you have particular driving coverage needs or own a classic or expensive performance car, is the specialist car insurance market. This market is comprised of many specialist car or niche motor insurance schemes, often operated by much smaller companies who could specialise in, for example, a particular classic car make and model scheme, young inexperienced driver insurance, or drivers with convictions.

These specialist policies are often available at much cheaper prices than both the price comparison sites and the direct insurers because they have both the bulk buying power and mutuality of affinity groups, where these economies of scale can be passed on as cheaper car insurance premiums to the customer; and also benefit from the fact that where the risk is known and can be grouped, much more accurate and tailored risk pricing can be achieved. To identify a suitable specialist company simply search online for insurance for your vehicle type.

Once you have identified a few policies that are suitable for your personal driving requirements, there are certain adjustments that can be made within the quotation system that will reduce the premiums.

Many of the adjustments that online car insurance applications allow you to make, do not reduce your levels of cover but transfer some of the risk to yourself in the form of excesses. The excess is the amount that you personally have to bear the cost of in the event of a claim, before the insurance cover kicks in.

The higher the excess you are prepared to accept on a voluntary basis the cheaper the cost of the policy. This method of reducing premiums is fine if you are a careful driver and do not believe that you will ever have an at fault accident or claim. Higher excesses invariably mean small claims for bumps and scratches are avoided. A new type of car insurance called value car insurance was recently introduced into the UK market by supermarket chain Tesco.

The concept of this insurance is an ultra high compulsory policy excess to deter all but the most serious claims; coupled with ultra low premiums, sometimes as much as a third of the competitors prices. Companies are able to offer this cheap coverage because claims are reduced and profits higher.

So in order to get cheap car insurance it is necessary to dedicate some time comparing policies, plans, schemes, covers and prices. Going direct or haggling on the phone can also sometimes produce spectacular price reductions, particularly as there are many promotional offers these days that are only available direct from the supplier. The more time you dedicate to exploring and researching various car insurance options the more likely it is that you will find much cheaper car insurance than you are currently paying!

Original Article Pulication : http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Healey http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Get-Cheaper-Car-Insurance-Without-Reducing-Your-Coverage&id=3102589

So there you have it...
Shop around, Compare Car Insurance at YouTube and check out TV and radio ads for great cheap car insurance deals.
Always remember to check what you are buying in terms of a claims service!

Specialist Car Insurance will cut premium costs!

The UK public are turning to specialist car insurance providers as they seek to reduce the costs of car insurance premiums during the current recession.

Specialist car insurers provide policies and cover that is tailored to the particular individual insurance needs of the driver or car, for example women driver insurance, classic car insurance cover or performance sports car insurance. Premiums are often much less than what the equivalent quote may be from a mainstream insurer. The policy covers are also much more suited to the type of vehicle or person driving it especially when it comes to making a claim. The advent of the Internet and online underwriting has enabled the public to have broad and wide access to policies that were previously reserved for the few. Division of cover by make, model or class of driver has also provided the specialist insurers with much safer risk pools of the type of business the are looking to underwrite and consequently with less claims they can offer further reductions in the cost of car insurance.



There are many companies now offering this cover online but it is best to shop around and compare quotes from many specialist car insurance providers. Visit a one stop shop where they compare specialist car insurance quotes from many providers for the best deals and cheap car insurance.

Renewing Your Car Insurance Policy

By Dave Healey

With the exception of the fairly new practice of issuing pay as you go car insurance policies, when you purchase car insurance you are entering into, and bound by the conditions of, a fixed term contract with the car insurance company. In the vast majority of cases this fixed term is for exactly one year since the date of the policy's inception or beginning.

As you near the end of the period of cover, your insurance company will invite or tender you to renew the contract. These days the systems employed by large car insurance companies will trigger the renewal procedure which initially means the production and posting of a set of renewal documents to the policyholder. This is usually timed so that the invite to renew pack is produced automatically around fifteen days prior to the termination of the existing car insurance contract, giving the prospective renewal policyholder time to correspond with the car insurance company and inform them of any changes that may have occurred during the term of the contract which are not reflected in the renewal documents.

If you intend to renew with the same insurance company you are legally bound to inform this company of any alterations to the statement of fact that you originally made when you first took out the policy.
Likewise you may wish to add or remove elements of cover from the current status of the car insurance policy, as your requirements may well have changed over the previous year.

Because of the compulsory nature of third party car insurance, no 'days of grace' are allowed after the renewal date of the policy. This can cause problems for car insurance companies as for practical purposes renewal documents and certificates have to be produced and dispatched to the prospective renewal policyholder in advance, which will become operative from the first day of the new period of insurance.

The renewal certificate, required by law to tax a motor vehicle, in theory cannot be issued until the renewal premium is paid. If payment was received subsequent to the expiry date of the existing car insurance policy, then the certificate would have to be re-written with the operative time and date matched to the time of payment. This could cause a major problem for the car insurance companies, as to issue an unaltered certificate would be equivalent to ante-dating it, which is a criminal offence, whilst re-writing the renewal documents would result in additional costs and expenditure to the car insurer, and more importantly would leave gaps in cover for the policyholder, which would leave a driver exposed to risks and legal action for driving without car insurance.

In order to overcome these practical difficulties of renewals, car insurers have developed a practice of incorporating into the renewal documents a certificate of insurance that is valid for an extended period of seven to fifteen days. This benefits both the prospective renewal and the insurance company by extending the period during which the insured has time to pay the renewal premium, yet still receive a certificate dated from the first day of the new contract period.

Car Insurers are particularly sensitive to what is known as the 'renewal retention ratio' , the number of renewals expressed as a percentage of the previous years total policies issued, especially since the introduction of online car insurance underwriting which has enabled a prospective renewal to shop around much easier and perhaps to change supplier.

The issue of this temporary certificate of cover in effect and contract law, constitutes an offer by the car insurance company, which the insured must either accept expressly, by paying the renewal premium, or by implication by doing nothing and having the premium taken from the payment source of the previous year's policy.

If however the prospective renewal obtains car insurance cover elsewhere or by some action, such as a telephone call, implies that he does not intend to renew and thereby not accept the offer, then this temporary cover would be deemed invalid. If a policyholder does not for some reason receive the renewal quote and certificate, or was unaware of the wording of the renewal notice, he cannot accept an offer and is therefore entitled to a full refund if the money has been debited from his account.

With the vast amount of choice available online for car insurance today, ranging from specialist car insurance schemes targeted at a particular group to the aggregator comparison websites, huge savings can be made by a policyholder at renewal if they are prepared to shop around for equivalent cover. It may not be in the best interests of a policyholder to blindly accept an offer to renew a car insurance contract without recourse to other offerings in the market which may be more suitable for their particular circumstances. Car Insurance rates vary immensely and it is not unheard of for companies to match or better a renewal offer from a competitor if you pick up the phone and give them a ring.

Dave Healey is a specialist car insurance underwiter who has been underwriting Car Insurance polices at Lloyds for over thirty years.

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