We have been given a car to use from my dad who says its fully insured with his business. My missus is handing her car back to Ford and is going to use my dads car. My question is if she uses it for the next year or two what will happen to her years of no claims when she then gets her own car and goes to insure it? Will that have gone because she used my dads car on his insurance or can she get a letter from her current insurer stipulating the number of years of no claim or do they expire? Hope that makes sense?

I think they expire after 2 years but check up on that.
If that’s the case them I suppose she’d need to ensure herself after 23 months max.

No claims normally stands for 2 years before going back to zero. So you can have an insurance ” break ” in your own name but have to reinsure within 2 years to keep the no claims.

Probably find paying £0 on insurance for two years is better than any NCB discount

Unless she’s paying something like £250 at the moment and it jumps to a grand with zero no claims..

people vastly overestimate the value of NCD

I suppose she could get a rough idea by punching her details into a comparison site with no no claims.. Obviously prices will change over time but should be an indication of what she’s looking at with no NCB.

Probably find paying £0 on insurance for two years is better than any NCB discount

Quite probably. Theres also something called NCD mirroring now too that helps take into account the driving records or people who are not the named insurer on shared vehicles. So although you lose the NCD if you’re still driving on other people’s insurance then if you re-insure yourself later some insurers will take that into account – at least for the first year or so, but as above the value of your NCD isn’t always that clear and once you’ve got a couple of years again you’d probably not notice the difference between that and 10 years discount.

NCD mirroring might depend on you being a named driver though – if the business insurance is just a blanket any driver insurance that she’s not named on mirroring might not be applicable.

Unless you’re a young / inexperienced driver then the discount isn’t going to be a huge amount of money to lose sleep about and its going to be less than the cost of one years insurance so if its a worry just put the money you would have been spending on insurance into a savings account and treat it as your own NCD later.

who says its fully insured with his business

You might want something a bit more concrete than his say so – I’d at least want to see the policy and fully understand what the exclusions, excesses etc are – especially as its a business policy and your wife isn’t an employee.

“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away”

+1 to double-check the small print. Business policies normally cover employees and/or use for the business itself.

As a former claims manager in a past life, you really don’t want it to go tits up at the claims stage. You’d be surprised how just how many family members “work” for the average one man band motor garage….

Do you have a car?
If so insure it in her name one year, then yours the next to maintain two sets of ncd.

Thanks guys, some very useful info there. She is a named driver on my car so will look further in to ncd mirroring.

I will almost certainly check the business insurance on the car and if not applicable then we will come to some other arrangement.

As mentioned above our plan B was to alternate insurance on my car although not sure if you have to be registered keeper to insure a car?

Anyone can insure a car, you don’t have to be registered keeper.

I used to lease mine and it was registered to the leasing company but I insured it. Don’t discount the value of NCD. a neighbour of mine stopped driving after 30 years as he had retired and didn’t need to commute and his only income was a works pension as he wasn’t old enough to claim state pension so he was saving money not having a car.

When his state pension kicked in, He took up fishing and needed a car to get his tackle about ( behave…. 😀 ) and his insurance was over £1000 as his NCD had lapsed.

Previous he was paying about £225.

Not anyone can insure your car, you have to have an insurable interest otherwise its a bet not insurance.
A contract of lease provides that insurable interest as does being married to the owner which is why husband and wife can insure each others property without owning it or being the registered keeper.

People may be able to quote examples when ncd didnt effect their premiums greatly but insurers use ncd like they use any other pricing tool increasing and decreasing the amount applied as suits the market and even giving different percentages to different customers with the same years.

Named driver discount rarely discount by as much and may restrict who you can buy from in the first place.

So unless its very inconvienient I would hold onto both sets.

(btw..in the example above changes to the drivers age, employment status and general premium inflation will account for some of the increase as well as the absence of ncd)

Do you have a car?
If so insure it in her name one year, then yours the next to maintain two sets of ncd.

That is all good and well until you have 10 owners of the car in 10 years.
Reason I am saying is my sons car went to my wife and I phoned insurance to transfer insurance from her car to sons old car and was asked if car (V5) was in wifes name ( I said not yet but could I leave it in sons name to save putting other owners on car as it was staying in house, then Tesco told me that the car had to be insured by the registered owner so the car had to be transferred to my wife)

Thats because your sons not married to your wife so a) theres no insurable interest b) they think your fronting the policy to reduce premiums c) to swap between husband and wife theres no need to change ownership.

Dunno about a nd c but I would doubt they would think she is fronting a policy he is not even on.

He doesn’t say if the son was or wasnt remaining on the policy but as he was to remain the owner its a reasonable presumption and if he’s not then he wife cant insure the car, its not hers. (there are some exclusions to this but wouldnt be in this case)

The whole proposition would be a clear a red flag for fronting to any sensible company.