UKH

I've got the confusing job of trying to get a 'reasonable' quote for car insurance for a new 17yr old driver (daughter). We're trying various permutations of who will own the car and who'll be first named driver (me, my partner or daughter) etc.

Has anyone managed to work out the best combination for their young drivers? Our any tips on pay as you go, black boxes etc.

Edit: car is a little Kia Picanto.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/car-insurance/young-drivers/

Not sure it matters who owns the car, but she should be the policy holder, any older named driver will reduce the premium. Painfully first year coat though. Never had a black box fitted though so no idea what difference they make.

Probably just best to make her first driver to avoid any issues should any claim occur.

Mark

As Mark says, if she is the main user of the car she has to go down as the first driver. 

Doing otherwise would be insurance fraud, and whilst loads of people do it and get away with it, if your daughter was involved in a serious accident with life changing (and therefore very expensive) consequences she could find herself uninsured. 

Do not put yourself as the main driver - this is fraud, they do look out for it and if you do you may have the policy cancelled which would put severe restrictions on your ability to get insurance yourself in future, as insurance companies understandably don't like liars.

However, you may find putting yourselves on as named drivers will reduce the cost a little, and you can make this totally legit by each driving the car once during the period of insurance (though it's justified simply on the grounds of wanting to be able to shuffle cars on the drive).

Black boxes, provided she's a careful driver, usually do reduce the cost too.

A friend had her (not technically married) husband on her policy, he never drove it and was only on a provisional licence but it still brought down her premiums. Can't see how insuring an extra (real) person can be an offence even if they don't drive it, totally agree though that you need to be honest regarding the main driver.

But what if the parent is the owner and main driver of a car and the son/daughter is added as a named driver who only occasionally drives the car for perhaps a couple years after they have passed their driving test at 17. Is that a better way to bring down their insurance costs in the long run?

How would the insurance company know? They would only know what you tell them.

My parents did this (admittedly many years ago), it was the only car in the home and shared between the three of us, so I was very much bottom of the priority list when it came to driving.

Downside was that I never built up any no claims, so when I finally looked to get a policy in my own name the premiums were extortionate. 

I think your daughter should absolutely be listed as the main driver to avoid any issues down the line. Maybe you could be added as a named driver to help bring the costs down slightly, as long as you each drive it occasionally to make it legitimate.

This was posted on a local Facebook page from someone who seemed to know what they're on about (i don't know them personally)...

If you haven't bought the car yet, try bigger engine sizes and cars not normally associated with young drivers as strangely they can be cheaper. If you're using comparison sites, set the start date for as far in the future as you can. Then when you accept a quote, change the date to the one you need - price remains the same. 
Add extra named drivers, preferably female and with a clean record.
Most of all, avoid Adrian Flux like your life depends on it.

If there's an accident they'll ask lots of questions to find out.

In any case, you shouldn't need the risk of being caught to know committing fraud isn't a good thing.

This is the default situation at the moment.

Yes the no claims thing is important. And I can't be sure who will actually be driving the car most as it's already my partner's car and in order of use it'll probably be partner most, then daughter, then me a tiny bit.

I assumed this would be a fairly common situation as we can't afford to just get her a new car straight away.

If you were the main driver on two cars insurance, and one included a young driver, and the young driver had a serious accident, then you can be damn sure that the insurance company would be checking for potential insurance fraud.

But were the quotes any lower just because you were a few years older when you first had your own car? Or does that not make much difference?

If it's your partner's car and your partner is the main driver then your partner should be the main driver on that car's policy.

You don't have to ever actually drive a car that you're a named driver on. But you would need to have been plausibly able and available to drive said car if an insurance company started asking questions.

Another point, the insurance on company cars often allows your kids to drive your company car (*). So if you have recourse to a company car, (even if you're currently taking a "cash" option) investigate that.

(*) my daughter practiced in, and then drove "my" Scirocco (and borrowed my Led zep CDs) which was definitely good for her street cred.

My youngest daughter started to learn last summer aged 31. We've insured the car in her name with me as a named driver so I can get the car to her house and back for her weekly lessons. It's costing over £1200 but at least it's her that's building the NCD.

You have my sympathies - it's expensive!

My son passed his test last year (age 17) so I ended up adding him as a named driver on the 10-year old Ford Focus that me and my partner share (value c£4k).  That took our insurance up from around £280pa to around £3600pa (!).  Luckily we were already 5 months into our annual insurance, so I had to pay around £1964 for 7 months of insurance for my son (no black boxes etc.).

When it came to renew the insurance in Feb this year the cost had dropped to £1914pa for all 3 of us.  Still a lot of money, but it's approaching half of what we would have paid the previous year, so it's heading the right way.

Did it drop that much with the same company? And was the £3.6k per the same price when shopping around?

I half wonder if it would have been cheaper to cancel your policy and shop around.

I've no doubt they would, but I still struggle to see how they would catch you out provided you have your stories straight. 

ANPR could be a part of it if regular journeys just happen to go past one, but I don't believe ANPR has a view of who is driving as far as I am aware.

I added a mate of mine to my insurance so that he could drive my car when he was over from Germany. He had a UK licence and just used his Mum's UK address. He drove it a few times, it didn't affect my premiums, or at least didn't add any more than the admin fees for adding him on mid-policy. There's probably a few years he didn't drive it at all. Only took him off to replace him with my wife.

If Insurers / loss -adjusters suspect that there's a non-disclosure issue, they sometimes appoint "special investigators" (often ex-police) who'll take written and signed statements, perhaps speak with neighbours, ask to review any household CCTV / doorbell camera recordings.  Okay, if it's a small claim they probably would not go to this length.  And if they did, if you did indeed "have your stories straight" you might get away with it, but it would be pretty stressful.

Same company in both cases (Aviva).  I did plenty of shopping around when I needed to add my son to the insurance (last July) and Aviva were at the cheaper end of the spectrum - I had quotes up to £7k for 7 months of insurance!

Price almost halved this February without changing insurer.

I don't think it matters that much who is listed as the main driver for a genuinely shared family car, insurers load the premium massively anyway to add a young driver (as Dave Todd!).  Just make sure you don't give them an obvious reason to turn a claim down - young driver taking it to university/commuting every day/saying it's the only car in the family when there are 4 etc, 

And add to that each person is risking a "conspiracy to defraud" conviction. That is definitely not worth risking just to save a couple of £k.

I did stuff like this when I was young, made some claims, got away with it. No way would I do it nowadays. Insurance companies are far more inclined to investigate, and they have so much data available to them. Their no.1 priority is to wriggle out of paying any claim, but the effort they are prepared to put in depends on the value of the claim. If you claim £5k, they will figure it's worth spending say £50 to check the claim over, but any more than that and it works out cheaper just to pay out. So the chances are you'll get away with it. Get involved in a major incident with a million pound claim and it's a very different story. They will put their top people on the job, searching everything they can for any excuse to get out of it. If you're not 100% legit, you'll be screwed.

Consider where you live. If you're surrounded by single-track roads with sharp bends then the forces generated by normal driving and having to brake hard to stop in a passing place will obliterate any savings you were hoping to make. If you live in a quiet, suburban area, it's probably a good idea though.

The NCD is less important than people think. It is whatever their algorithms can find to justify maximum shafting that matters.

For example, these are the discounts from admiral  recently looked at as my sister is with them

Years of NCB   ---   Average discount in 2023

One                15%

Two               16%

Three              17%

Four                18%

Five                18%

Six                  18%

Seven              18%

Eight                 18%

Nine plus           27%

So after 1 year you get 15% off the quote given. Not bad, makes a £2000 insurance go down to £1700....

Then for the next 3 years an extra £20/year (1%) discount. Nice, buy yourself an ice cream with the savings.

After 4 years no extra discounts till you hit 9+. So if you are quoted £2000, which most young people will, the cheapest you wil get the insurance for is £1640 by year 4 and then ~1500 after year 9

That is 1500 quid, after 9 years driving with no claims (including not-fault claims)

Second this, even if they offer the cheapest insurance, avoid adrian flux like the plague, especially for a black box policy.

Was insured with them my first year (2019) with a black box and would get constant threats of insurance cancellation due to problems with their box transmitting its data wrong or randomly running out of juice while plugged in (had to have it replaced 3 times), and then once I had an accident they were absolutely useless and downright negligent with their handling

Yep, flux are crap. They were great at first when they were a small family business 15 years ago but they're not that any more. They're dicks now.

When I was about 20, I took out a policy and had to make a third party at fault claim. I had made a mistake when buying the insurance and said I had 2 years NCBs in the box for additional NBC which are in additional to what they were already aware of, meaning I was down as having 4 years NCB instead of 2.

This was flagged straight away after the accident (probably because i couldn't possibly have 4 years NBCs at 20) but instead of voiding the claim, they just charged me £50 for the revision to the policy amount which I thought was pretty fair. They could have charged me anything and I would have had to pay it to stay legal.

The above wasn't fraud, it was an error, so a little different, but with fraud, they still wouldn't be able to wriggle out of paying for a third party claim. They would likely still have to pay it, under their duties in Section 151 of the Road Traffic Act, but they may come after you to cover their costs if they think it's worth while. I don't think they can just palm it off to the Motor Insurers Bureau as far as I am aware.

Which is why they would need some pretty solid evidence to sue you. My guess is they would struggle to get that evidence together. The stressful part of it would be they would likely call your bluff and threaten sue anyway, and you would need to decide if they have the evidence to follow through with it or not.

It's interesting how this sort of fraud gets kind of accepted in society.

I'm fairly sure that a similar thread discussing how to get away with most other types of crime would get pulled by the mods sharpish.

Nobody has suggested or promoted the idea of fraud. 

If they are a multi car family they may well be able to change their habits and usage to enable anyone of them to be a legitimate main driver.

I've seldom heard of Insurers suing for conspiracy to defraud - more just not paying out on the claim and daring the claimant to go to an ombudsman / litigate to get them to accept liability. 

I'm not sure how it works with motor insurance, but with domestic and commercial building and/or contents policies, the issue with non-disclosure / providing incorrect information is had the Insurer had been aware of the truth, would they have offered the same policy at a similar premium cost.  If they can argue that the non-disclosed information would have led them to refuse cover, or only offer cover under significantly different conditions, they can repay the premium and void the policy - essentially pretend they had never insured. 

I imagine it's because people largely see the auto insurance company as a legalised shafting of the average driving citizen, which often it is

Like many things in our society what started as a reasonable requirement at a reasonable price has become a way for some faceless company to extract as much money from you as they possibly can 

To quote you from further up the thread:

How would the insurance company know? They would only know what you tell them.

The insurer (Trinity Lane) who Adrian Flux referred me to rejected my claim, subsequent appeal and have now been told to pay up by the Insurance Ombudsman (who they are currently ignoring).

I don't have a single good word to say about them.

I haven't suggested or encouraged or promoted anybody to commit fraud.

I had genuine questions over how you could ever be caught doing it.

A lot of the responders pointed out that you will likely get caught. I'm not so sure you would.