Car Insurance – Huge increase anyone else?

Renewal quote just in.

Same car, same address same drivers same everything.

£450 last year, £749 this year!

Mrs Seadog has got this reduced by increasing Voluntary Excess and reducing annual mileage to close to actual.  Still lots more.

Blimey.

I agree, first time mine had been over £300 in the last 20 years, think it was even over £400!

Yes, doubled with direct line. Did the meerkat and found plenty bona fide options at half their offer

Reported it on here last July. It doubled.

ring around. Apprently Insurance had a bad year last year so all premiums are up, whether you are a risk or not, to claw back their bonuses!

Stayed with same company, went down by £70 last year, down by just under £20 this year. The mileage payment went up a bit, but I can live with that.

Just have to shop around unfortunately. I had a good couple of years with A Plan at around £3/400 but in Jan this year their renewal was a good £1000 increase. Did the comparison to-and-fro and now with Adrian Flux for the slightly more acceptable sum of ~£750, although that’s after some beefy modifications so I don’t feel too hard done by.

Van insurance was tasty too – £800 for a 15yo T5 – but it’s new to us so not got anything to compare with

Mine was 60% up with Direct line. Strangely, my dad’s went down about £80, also with Direct Line

It is somewhat non-sensical.

Camper – 2no. 49yr olds with 15yrs NCB – decreased £6 to £400ish. Would not even consider insuring the 22 year old who used to have his own camper and 2yrs NCB insured with them. Cheapest other quote with the 22 year old was £3600 and £900 excess….

Fabia estate – doubled from £500 to £1000. Refused to insure the 18 year old who they insured last year. Cheapest quote for the 18 year old was many £000’s.

No claims, no points, no change in circumstances.

It seems anything deemed a slight risk has a much harsher rise in cost than before…

Apparently “Insurers say rises are partly due to general inflation, rising car repair costs – with garages charging more for parts and labour – and paying out more for written-off cars, due to the value of used cars getting ever higher”

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/tips/2023/10/31/

Not just us then.

Shopping around made very little difference.

We did get it down to a reasonable increase, mainly by reducing the annual milage. We had 11k, but it’s actually more like 7k averaged over the last 3 years.

Yep, car and house insurance renewals were a good 50% plus higher last year, oddly motorcycle insurance dropped slightly.

Got walloped for a big rise last November. Hope it doesn’t happen again.

Direct Line £338. Up around £20. Long no claims record  low crime area, and old but not yet decrepit driver.

House insurance just paid – down £20.

@Matt_outand about Interesting your point about the Fabia. My daughter, in her thirties, has a 10yr old Fabia 1.2. Her quote was almost £200 more than previous year. We have a 4 car multi policy so I queried this & was told by two different people that they don’t have information on how the computer algorism works things out regarding different manufacturers. Could be lots of Skoda claims in her area (lots of Skoda taxis), expensive parts etc etc. Also EV repairs are so expensive everyone’s insurance gets adjusted upwards. Think it’s been in the news & motoring mags.

Apparently the best time to get an insurance quote is 20-26 before renewal as this shows your organised and responsible – Martin Lewis. Seems to be the sweet spot.

Mines down about £50 – Shelias Wheels on auto renewal.

Home insurance went up though by a similar amount….

Converted campervan (not VW). Insurance renewal quote came through and went down £70 so I have just left it to auto renew 🤯🤷

I was expecting a ~50% increase!

Mrs’s renewal this month came in less than last year, so at least it isn’t universal. Mine is next month. Even if it’s something outrageous I’m fairly confident shopping around will find something as good or better. Was paying <£200 a year fully comp til a couple of years ago.

I wonder if they are trying to offset the cost of EV write offs by increasing policies across the board.  I understand that fairly easy repairs are being deemed write offs due to the slight risk of battery damage/future liability?  There has also been a lot of publicity over the price of EV policies.

I’m not knocking EVs at all, I’m a fan, just a theory

I work for an insurance fraud team.

Fraud goes up drastically as finances bite hard for people

The number of and the value of personal injury claims has gone down, so we are seeing a lot more unscrupulous solicitors and accident management companies etc turn to bent metal claims with large credit hire claims etc.

Plus many makes of car are struggling for parts, especially BMW, VW etc, so often insurers are writing off the cars instead of repairing to stop the large hire claims.

Finally there are more and more electric cars on the road, people think they are great for the environment, but very cagey second hand market, nightmare to repair, and often they are written off because of the cost of repairs, and the fact they need specialist repairers and disposal techniques. The days of repairing cars with a steel frame and metal wings and body parts attached to it are coming to an end, the use of exotic materials such as carbon fibre causes all manner of headaches, and even windscreens and the ike have become very complex to replace often.

Plus factor in things like the weather, how much rain and flooding have we had…

I wonder if they are trying to offset the cost of EV write offs by increasing policies across the board.

There’s an equal(ish) chance that your cheaper older car is going to plough into a Taycan/Model Y/etc and write it off which your insurer will have to pay out for, compared to the EV owner wrecking their own vehicle.

Reading this makes me worried for my wife’s renewal in a few weeks. Her car is currently being repaired by the insurer after another knock 🫣. It’s ok though because she told me it wasn’t her fault…..again. She must just be unlucky, for the fourth time I guess.

I wonder if they are trying to offset the cost of EV write offs

It’s not just EV repairs.

Modern cars have so many sensors that what was once simple body work repair, now involves huge labour connecting and disconnecting stuff to knock out a dent or spray a bumper.

One of my favourite YT channels (Salvage Rebuilds UK YouTube – SRUK) buy write offs and sell them on after doing them up. They make good money because cars get written off so cheaply by insurers. They did a VW Taigo that, I think, had 900 miles on it and was a write off. They could have made about £10k on that sale if they were greedy.

Frustratingly that £10k is part of the reason our premiums are going up.

EVs don’t help of course, but all modern cars are so fiddly that repairs to anything are on a different level to a generation ago.

But huge PSA on Salvage Rebuilds.  Great guys and a great channel if you are inclined.

My renewal came in £800 more than my current policy – with zero claims or incidents in 20+ years and no changes to my circumstances.

Even shopping around I struggled to get anything near my current policy price. So now the car is gone.

1.0 Skoda Fabia was one of the chrapest cars to fetch Jnr insured on 4 years ago. If more youngsters have got them because of this, then had more crashes, the risk profile will be changing.

That said, looking at the kids I know locally who have passed a test recently,  it’s not the car that is the problem.

Another small but contributing factor to the problems with EVs: they frequently require longer stopping distances, as they’re usually 0.5-1 tonne heavier than a comparable sized petrol/diesel car.  This just happened to or neighbours with their electric, 2.5t Kia SUV.  On a dry road downhill, emergency braking for someone turning across them, theirs simply didn’t slow down quickly enough.  It’s hard to be sure from the dashcam footage but it did look like it should be possible to be able to stop in time but the driver is adamant he was giving it everything…

Our two car policy with LV went from about £360 to £410. That’s for a Fabia and a Superb in a rural setting in Angus, two semi-mature drivers, both clean.

Mine went up from £800 to £1400 but the original auto renewal was about £2200. One protected claim in period but that was all. Very much thinking of getting rid and getting an old banger.

Mine and my wife cars both stayed the same (LV which I switched to as the cheapest option last year for a company with feedback that suggests they actually pay out on stuff)

Home insurance is another matter though and has gone from £1500 to £2300 this year with no real options to switch as not many insurers cover thatched properties other than NFU (who I insure with) and a couple of companies I have never heard of.

Finally there are more and more electric cars on the road, people think they are great for the environment, but … nightmare to repair

Just to give a bit of background on this, cost to replace one failed battery cell might be 4-6k.

Cost to replace an entire battery might be 40-50k. These are main dealer, premium marque prices.

Feel free to whinge about motor manufacturers’ profit margins, or dealers for that matter. 😀

Oh, and JLR recently said they were going to put £1million into working to reduce the risk of theft of Range Rovers. Woohoo, that’s nearly ten whole cars worth of money. :sarcasticsmiley:

Just done the wife’s Freelander 2.  Current provider wanted an extra £100, up from £285.
Quick check on the comparison sites and got same level of cover but included RAC cover for £320.
We do live in a sleepy, low crime part of town and she’s never claimed or had points in 30 years of driving.

Both our house and car insurance increased this year, by a significant sum. Shopping around brought both of them back down to vaguely sensible levels similar to last year.

Mine and Wife’s stayed the same. Son’s car looks to be a massive increase – due next month, so he may SORN it as he is using the ‘run about’ 12 year old Aygo. That insurance is £1400 pa with a new driver and my 23 year old son as drivers (as well as me and MrsF).

~40% hike on ours come renewal last month.  My initial reaction was “are you %^&*ing kidding me?” but half a day comparing wombats saved me about 80 quid.  Premiums have shot up across the board.

I appreciate @scud’s observations, but insurance on a 1 litre grannymobile Seat with 10 years NCD and taking additional voluntary excess really shouldn’t be pushing £500.

This article last month was an eye-opener (TLDR:  garages, claims management companies, car rentals, lawyers etc all make lots of money if claim payouts are higher)

As was this – Cash For Crash scams up by 6,000% last year

£475 last year. £600 renual quote this year. Phoned them and said its too much, can tou do anything? They then quoted £500. They exploit the lazy and the busy.

@pennine – I compared it to our old cars (Leon and Ibiza) – all were silly increase, it seems it is the young drivers they are looking to not cover/charge more for. Maybe there has been more of their mates crashing this year…

Slight thread drift – I had a near miss in a car park recently. Started to reverse out, usual watching several places at once.  Rear window. Nose of car. Side window for the entrance road for cars entering the car park. Suddenly the car auto-braked to a complete stop. A car in one of the places directly across (which had been stationary when I started to reverse) had driven out and passed behind me close enough to trigger the braking sensors.

Learning p0int? It wouldn’t have happened if I had reversed into my space and as I wasn’t needing to use the boot no need to park nose in.

Well  yeah, always reverse in. Usually I do that, then return with a full trolley of shopping and unable to get anywhere near the boot. Win/lose.

And yeah, it’s shop around time for insurance now. Been with Tesco for years as they were cheap, but not this year so moved on to…. (can’t remember…. whatever was top of the comparison list with a known breakdown bunch added in).