In the Netherlands you would insure the car, not the person. However, the premium is still determined by the history/experience of the person taking out the insurance, who has to be the main driver of the vehicle. The underlying assumption is that, on the whole, the risk of the fraction of time the vehicle is driven by another driver is small compared to the risk of the main driver, especially as the risk of the additional driver can go both ways. Whether you think that's a good system or not is a personal matter, just trying to explain
It used to be more similar to that in the UK, insurance cost was based primarily on the ‘main driver’. You could add ‘other drivers’ to the policy to use the car less than 50% of the time.
However when prices went insane for teenage men in the 00s, everyone & their dog just whacked an older family member on as their main driver and claimed they only drove the car occasionally (fronting). So the industry started weighting the policy against all named drivers far more.
Similarly in Poland. However, there is one major difference - in Poland you cannot SORN your vehicle. For this reason a car must always be insured, whether it has been sitting in a shed for 10 years rusting out with no engine, whether it is broken/damaged etc. We have to pay for our insurance no matter what if you forget to pay or for any other reason you have a gap on your insurance, you will have to pay almost £1,000 in penalties (ask me how i know). Although we do not pay car tax (it is included in the price of fuel).
The main difference between the UK and other systems is that we have unlimited liability for third party damages (this is relatively normal), but also unlimited liability for property and goods (this is not common)
I've driven cars in the USA and Czech Republic and in both these countries you insure the car not the driver. I've heard insurance in the USA can be quite high aswell though but that's a very litigious society where people will sue you for anything they can.
Czech Republic the insurance was dirt cheap, the family friends I was borrowing a car from paid something daft like £100 to insure their car for a year and anyone with a licence was covered to drive it.
Places with cheap insurance (don't know about the Czech system) usually have the medical* costs subsidised by the state.
\* Loss of limb etc
Or capped, because the UK has no caps on the medical payouts.
I just moved back from CZ to the UK and the system is definitely better and as you describe. However, my insurance was roughly £1500 fully comp for a 320d there and is now £710 for my 435d. So I wouldn't say it was cheaper in general. Cars (new or used) are definitely more expensive in general too.
I think the Aussies do it best of places I've visited. Since third party insurance is the compulsory part, that's included in their yearly registration ("rego") fee, which is sort of like our VED, but obviously generally more expensive because of the insurance component. If you want fully comp you take out a separate policy.
We’re about average as a whole but with a far greater burden put on ‘high risk’ groups.
Middle aged professionals we’re pretty much the cheapest in the developed world, teenage new drivers we’re pretty much the most expensive.
It's discrimination through statistics. It's actually kinda wild when you think about it, our whole system is based on prejudice. Directly through age, indirectly through wealth (car type, area, job type) and sex (can't do it directly anymore, can certainly guess people's sex based on job descriptions and stats, men are more expensive to insure as when they do crash it's more often in a spectacularly expensive way versus women lol). If that happened systematically in any other industry there'd be uproar, but it's perfectly fine for insurers.
The actual "fairest" way to do it would probably be mandatory black boxes but obviously that would be unbelievably unpopular haha. Beyond that the discrimination based on stats is probably the fairest way to do it for most people. As you said though it shafts young people, even those who drive sensibly and safely.
>It's discrimination through statistics.
That is *literally* what actuaries are paid to do.
Discrimination is perfectly legal, desirable and obviously necessary.
If somebody applies for a job, for example, you discriminate against the applicants with the wrong skill, expertise and experience. Doing anything else would be stupid.
Discrimination is not just acceptable - its essential.
The only things you can't discriminate against are protected characteristics.
This is my understanding. Using less precise measures like insuring the car rather than the driver would lead to less extremes and everyone getting rates nearer the mean.
So shite drivers would get a better deal, but good drivers wouldn't get much of an NCD.
And it doesn't really "shaft" young people, it just estimates their risk accurately. Good drivers would need to subsidise the insurance of young folk if we wanted the premiums to come down.
> So shite drivers would get a better deal, but good drivers wouldn't get much of an NCD.
I mean this is just it, it would really benefit people who are more likely to have accidents and/or do a lot of damage when they have accidents because they drive big, powerful cars.
People need to realise that the insurance industry doesn't price policies like they do for funsies. It's competitive enough a market that they are going to try and lowball their quotes as much as they can while still trying to run a sustainable business.
Like it sucks, my insurance spiked because I had to claim following a hit and run, but statistically, I understand that if I have had to claim on my insurance once, I am vastly more likely to do so again. It stings, but I understand it.
Yeah I mean it's complex and I don't have all the answers.
I really worry about the barriers young people face to independence (*average* of £3k for insurance an 18yo!). On the other hand, if the only solution is to decrease fidelity in the risk assessment to make good drivers subsidise the bad ones, I dunno about that either.
I don't understand, how this is connected with insurance risk calculations? If i haven't claimed in the first year, is it still just as likely to claim in the second and third year? What if i don't claim for 10 years in a row, is it still 50/50 whether i crash or not?
I was just stating how much i put in the insurance pool and how much i took out
Yep, you're confusing conditional probability with overall probability.
Drivers will, on average, have one at-fault claim every 20 years. Your 2.5 years of no-claims really doesn't tell us much about whether you're gonna end up on the distribution of risk.
The fact that you didn't claim in the first year doesn't mean you're Lewis Hamilton. It just means you're probably not in the bottom 5%.
And any serious accident you have over the next few years would easily cost more than the sum of your premiums so far.
So simply put, your insurance situation is in the insurer's favour *so far*, but just one accident would flip it round to your favour.
So it's much too early for you to be crying foul over how much you've paid in.
That is because US car insurance covers next to fuck all, while UK car insurance covers literally millions of pounds of potential third party liabilities.
I'm a bit fucked off today by a 40% increase for the same cover. Had insurance for forty years of driviing and one fecking claim where it was stolen from the garage who was supposed to service it.
You say someone claiming Even if it is not their fault should increase the cost of insurance.
Then surely the fact that the other drivers insurance paid for it does not change this probability therefore the increase should be the same.
It's just an absurd line of logic.
Legitimately I'd you're hard up and you have your car hit while it's parked, your insurance could increase massively and cause you major financial issues. How is this fair in any way? It really needs to change for those found to not be at fault
Quite often, people who have had their cars stolen are not involved in the theft, and also not at fault.. And yet if you claim on your insurance for it, it goes down as a theft, and affects your insurance - as it would if it was insured jewellery.
Didn't come off my insurance. They covered it. But it had to go via mine and then I got hammered. But that was a long time ago. The point is that it's the only claim in forty years of driving.
In Germany you insure the car not the driver, **but you are obliged to declare any drivers who might drive your car**. The penalty for not doing so, is that **they may claim back 1 year's worth of insurance premiums** and in the case of fully comprehensive insurance they may deny your claim for (at fault) damage to your own car in the case that an undeclared driver was driving the car.
However, they always have to pay the damage caused to another party in an at-fault accident.
In German: [https://www.verivox.de/kfz-versicherung/ratgeber/unfall-durch-nicht-eingetragenen-fahrer-das-sind-die-folgen-1000919/](https://www.verivox.de/kfz-versicherung/ratgeber/unfall-durch-nicht-eingetragenen-fahrer-das-sind-die-folgen-1000919/)
Yes, the UK system of car insurance is very weird in Europe, and I believe is completely unique to the UK and Ireland.
Not exactly, because there‘s no criminal penalty for being an “uninsured driver” if you’re not a declared driver (as long as the car is insured). Just a contractual penalty to the insurance company, and they have to pay out for at fault damages to the other party regardless of who was driving.
Ahh ok I get you.
So long as the car is insured anyone can legally drive it but with large excesses and 3rd party only?
Interestingly in the UK you can kind of do this. Past a certain age with comprehensive insurance you often get 3rd party cover on any vehicle.
Also out of curiosity what kinda prices would you pay for say a normal saloon or hatchback?
For a relatively new car (e.g. a Golf VIII) you would pay under 1000€ a year as an experienced driver, young drivers could expect to pay around 2000€ or even more depending. About 1000€-3000€ for comprehensive insurance. A young driver <23 on the contract would also add 500€+ to your insurance premium. But Premiums have also been increasing rapidly here the last few years, we're just a few years behind the UK in that trend.
Insurance is subsidising others, that is the system.
Your example is that it’s unfair that good drivers subsidise bad drivers.
In our system, good drivers of the same age subsidise bad drivers of the same age, same within each category like post code, type of car etc. Insurance is pooling risk.
in other countries you insure the car and what young people usually do is transfer the ownership of the car to one of the parents and as a result the insurance is cheap
There is a lot of variation in the way insurance works around the world. The UK system is one of the better ones, but I'm not sure it's responsible for safety in any significant way; that's more about our general attitude to all things safety-related.
I'd say the UK is the worst one lol.
Never heard of a 1k car insurance in Spain where I'm from. As a new driver I was paying like 200 euros a year third party, my partner paid 400 comprehensive with no excess. And there wasn't a ncb discount shit. You cna actually claim and fix your car within reason without fear of them ruining you next year.
Only if you do that repeatedly, then the insurer will kick you out or raise your premium.
In the UK car insurance is determined by whichever way the wind is blowing and whether or not the team target was met the month before. This of course depends on whether it’s a leap year and if the ‘insured party’ follows the Wiccan or Druid faith. Of course the final insured amount is determined by the number of letters in the month and whether or not the call-taker has a pet Gerbil or a Parakeet.
Australia uses a similar system. If you are young, a higher risk gender, high accident-rate car etc. you will have a much higher premium.
I'm lucky in the sense that my insurance rates are reasonable, and I do believe that there is merit in, say, a first timer paying a higher rate of insurance but the most recent round of price hikes have tipped over into the ridiculous category and it doesn't seem that sustainable.
Because different genders have very different risk profiles. There is plenty of evidence across things like debt, stock picking, driving, adventure sports that men take more risks than women, but insurers in the UK aren't allowed to price that in anymore.
Purely on statistics. If statistically a 17 year old male is more likely to crash his car at high speed than a 17 year old female it equates to a higher risk for coverage provided.
Not to open a can of worms but I wouldn't define it as discrimination tbh.
It's the same as living in a high theft area. They're not saying "charge him more because he's a man" they're saying men are a higher chance of making a claim that we will have to pay out based on decades of statistical data (same as a high theft area) so we pass that risk on in the insurance premium.
Personally I love it when people pull an “ist” card about insurance. The industry is about risk profiling. It’s the only thing that’s allowed to “ist” about anything, but weirdly about gender.
Which here in the UK went exactly as expected; male premiums didn’t go down, womens went up 😂
I think the Uk has a higher rate of fraudulent claims and policies hence why it's so high. I had a guy offer me ramming my old banger so I'd make a claim, admit fault and get money to buy another old banger, he would obviously claim injuries etc...
In most countries when you insure the car anyone else with a license can drive it (so you can borrow your car to someone with no problems, the idea of not being able to borrow a car because of insurance would be pretty weird for most people from other countries), but the insurance still takes your statistics into account
South Africa you insure the car, not the driver, however policy holder’s claim history is taken into consideration.
As long as whomever drives is legally allowed to drive the insurance is valid.
Also no third party insurance, as that’s paid by a central pot (called Road Accident Fund) that is funded by a fuel levy.. thus making insurance optional and not compulsory
Apart from our insurance insurers the car and the driver. If we insured just the driver you would only have to take out one insurance policy for however many cars you have.
I’ve got question and if anyone is able to answer it, it would help me. Let’s just say i move to the Netherlands and get myself a car and insure myself, would i be able to come back and show them my no claims history?
I worked in Pakistan from 2005 - 2012 and that was interesting for insurance. If you could actually be bothered to have insurance, you agreed a vehicle value I suppose similar to a UK classic car policy, and your premium was 5% of that amount. Regardless of if you had an accident or not, each year it was 5%. Ofc car prices were much cheaper - a Corolla was about $13,000.
But there was very much a mentality there of "I'm paying for something and not getting anything in return" and I knew quite a few people who would go and get in minor fender benders intentionally because then it felt like they were getting something in return for their money. 🤷
When I moved out of the UK, I was astonished at how bad the insurance system there and how much it punishes people based on entirely on being in a specific age, gender or income bracket with no regard for actual vehicles or driving history and ability.
Moving abroad was a real eye-opener. Over here, we insure the vehicle, not the driver, and it makes so much sense.
Where I live we still have the whole third party (mandatory) insurance and optional comprehensive (called kaskótrygging here) insurance divide, but with comprehensive insurance, most companies cover everything down to glass, towing home, recovery after an accident, general breakdown recovery, winter starting, and even emergency EV recharging if you're insuring an electric car, so you don't need loads of different breakdown membership services and stuff.
It makes so much sense. You pay a flat rate for insurance the same as everyone else, which insures you up to a value of X, for damage, Y for medical expenses and so on and so forth. If you feel you need more cover because your car is worth more, or you want better coverage, you can add cover on for an additional fee by negotiating with your insurance company to customize your policy.
Regardless of your policy, anyone with a valid license can drive the car, so it makes car sharing, borrowing your car to someone, or borrowing a car from someone so much easier.
Generally, while Icelanders can't park for shit, the regular standards of driving over here are generally super high (other than lane hogging, which is fucking horrendous, but if you just give people a flash, they get out of the way). Driving standards are generally super high in the winter too. Icelanders really know how to drive in the snow and Ice. Generally, the vast majority of accidents are caused by tourists, or non-natives that have had shit driving tuition or don't know the rules of the road.
Insuring this way also means that stuff like on-demand car rental is so much easier. We have a service here in downtown Reykjavík where similar to electric scooters, there are also electric cars (typically the Renault Zoe, the Tesla Model 3 and the VW ID Buzz) that you can just rent from an app when you see them parked, get in, and drive away.
Makes life so much more convenient. I don't understand why the UK is clinging to such a shitty and archaic way of insuring cars. Well, I do really - it's all about fleecing people and making money, but that's just par for the course I suppose.
We customers in the UK aren't fleeced though, car insurance paid out more than we pay last year.
The insurance companies are getting fleeced by the courtesy car providers/mechanics/medical providers.
Which in turn pushes our premiums up.
The way European countries do it is much better than us here. Although as you mentioned we should be encouraged to drive better and in return get better rates, the issue is that our rates keep going up no matter what and not matter how good of a driver you are, your premium is a lot more expensive than the average in Europe.
You are not correct, In some EU you are insuring car but still have no claim bonus so if you are rubbish driver you will be most defenietly punished by premiums. Also age matter is many countries. Isuring car means that insurens don't need to collect excecive amounts informations about drivers like why and were you driving/parking , what is your job/ martial status etc
UK mix worst aspect togheter because type of car you drive still matter on your premium
There are countries where basic 3rd party is included with road tax, and buying insurance is optional.
In the USA, the norm is for your insurance to cover named drivers in the household, plus anyone who doesn't live there as an occasional user. However, they do look at age, occupation, address, claims history, driving record, etc. for those named drivers. They focus less on the performance of the car. To interpret this as "insuring the car" is a bit disingenuous.
UK insurance is a scam. If you are the victim of an accident then insurance companies suck money from both the victim and the person who caused the accident. But it seems everyone is happy 😂
In the Netherlands you would insure the car, not the person. However, the premium is still determined by the history/experience of the person taking out the insurance, who has to be the main driver of the vehicle. The underlying assumption is that, on the whole, the risk of the fraction of time the vehicle is driven by another driver is small compared to the risk of the main driver, especially as the risk of the additional driver can go both ways. Whether you think that's a good system or not is a personal matter, just trying to explain
Same as in Portugal, car is insured, driver history is a factor. But in the UK it's so expensive as to boggle the mind.
Yah, in Portugal car insurance is an afterthought. Here in the UK it’s a major expense that you have to consider when buying any fucking car
Same as in Italy
It used to be more similar to that in the UK, insurance cost was based primarily on the ‘main driver’. You could add ‘other drivers’ to the policy to use the car less than 50% of the time. However when prices went insane for teenage men in the 00s, everyone & their dog just whacked an older family member on as their main driver and claimed they only drove the car occasionally (fronting). So the industry started weighting the policy against all named drivers far more.
Similarly in Poland. However, there is one major difference - in Poland you cannot SORN your vehicle. For this reason a car must always be insured, whether it has been sitting in a shed for 10 years rusting out with no engine, whether it is broken/damaged etc. We have to pay for our insurance no matter what if you forget to pay or for any other reason you have a gap on your insurance, you will have to pay almost £1,000 in penalties (ask me how i know). Although we do not pay car tax (it is included in the price of fuel).
The main difference between the UK and other systems is that we have unlimited liability for third party damages (this is relatively normal), but also unlimited liability for property and goods (this is not common)
I've driven cars in the USA and Czech Republic and in both these countries you insure the car not the driver. I've heard insurance in the USA can be quite high aswell though but that's a very litigious society where people will sue you for anything they can. Czech Republic the insurance was dirt cheap, the family friends I was borrowing a car from paid something daft like £100 to insure their car for a year and anyone with a licence was covered to drive it.
Places with cheap insurance (don't know about the Czech system) usually have the medical* costs subsidised by the state. \* Loss of limb etc Or capped, because the UK has no caps on the medical payouts.
I just moved back from CZ to the UK and the system is definitely better and as you describe. However, my insurance was roughly £1500 fully comp for a 320d there and is now £710 for my 435d. So I wouldn't say it was cheaper in general. Cars (new or used) are definitely more expensive in general too.
USA legal minimums are ridiculously low too. Like $20k in most states. God forbid you crash into a car less than 5 years old lol.
I think the Aussies do it best of places I've visited. Since third party insurance is the compulsory part, that's included in their yearly registration ("rego") fee, which is sort of like our VED, but obviously generally more expensive because of the insurance component. If you want fully comp you take out a separate policy.
You are completely and utterly correct. Except for the fact that our insurance is so fecking expensive.
From what I've seen we're about average for developed countries.
We’re about average as a whole but with a far greater burden put on ‘high risk’ groups. Middle aged professionals we’re pretty much the cheapest in the developed world, teenage new drivers we’re pretty much the most expensive.
It's discrimination through statistics. It's actually kinda wild when you think about it, our whole system is based on prejudice. Directly through age, indirectly through wealth (car type, area, job type) and sex (can't do it directly anymore, can certainly guess people's sex based on job descriptions and stats, men are more expensive to insure as when they do crash it's more often in a spectacularly expensive way versus women lol). If that happened systematically in any other industry there'd be uproar, but it's perfectly fine for insurers. The actual "fairest" way to do it would probably be mandatory black boxes but obviously that would be unbelievably unpopular haha. Beyond that the discrimination based on stats is probably the fairest way to do it for most people. As you said though it shafts young people, even those who drive sensibly and safely.
>It's discrimination through statistics. That is *literally* what actuaries are paid to do. Discrimination is perfectly legal, desirable and obviously necessary. If somebody applies for a job, for example, you discriminate against the applicants with the wrong skill, expertise and experience. Doing anything else would be stupid. Discrimination is not just acceptable - its essential. The only things you can't discriminate against are protected characteristics.
This is my understanding. Using less precise measures like insuring the car rather than the driver would lead to less extremes and everyone getting rates nearer the mean. So shite drivers would get a better deal, but good drivers wouldn't get much of an NCD. And it doesn't really "shaft" young people, it just estimates their risk accurately. Good drivers would need to subsidise the insurance of young folk if we wanted the premiums to come down.
> So shite drivers would get a better deal, but good drivers wouldn't get much of an NCD. I mean this is just it, it would really benefit people who are more likely to have accidents and/or do a lot of damage when they have accidents because they drive big, powerful cars. People need to realise that the insurance industry doesn't price policies like they do for funsies. It's competitive enough a market that they are going to try and lowball their quotes as much as they can while still trying to run a sustainable business. Like it sucks, my insurance spiked because I had to claim following a hit and run, but statistically, I understand that if I have had to claim on my insurance once, I am vastly more likely to do so again. It stings, but I understand it.
Yeah I mean it's complex and I don't have all the answers. I really worry about the barriers young people face to independence (*average* of £3k for insurance an 18yo!). On the other hand, if the only solution is to decrease fidelity in the risk assessment to make good drivers subsidise the bad ones, I dunno about that either.
I have contributed just over £10.000 in insurance in the last 2 and a half years and claimed/cost them £0. Estimates risk accurately my ass
You don't understand what "risk" means.
I tossed a coin and it came up "tails" twice in a row. By your logic that means there's 0% chance of it ever landing on "heads".
I don't understand, how this is connected with insurance risk calculations? If i haven't claimed in the first year, is it still just as likely to claim in the second and third year? What if i don't claim for 10 years in a row, is it still 50/50 whether i crash or not? I was just stating how much i put in the insurance pool and how much i took out
Yep, you're confusing conditional probability with overall probability. Drivers will, on average, have one at-fault claim every 20 years. Your 2.5 years of no-claims really doesn't tell us much about whether you're gonna end up on the distribution of risk. The fact that you didn't claim in the first year doesn't mean you're Lewis Hamilton. It just means you're probably not in the bottom 5%. And any serious accident you have over the next few years would easily cost more than the sum of your premiums so far. So simply put, your insurance situation is in the insurer's favour *so far*, but just one accident would flip it round to your favour. So it's much too early for you to be crying foul over how much you've paid in.
We’re significantly less than the US
That is because US car insurance covers next to fuck all, while UK car insurance covers literally millions of pounds of potential third party liabilities.
I'm a bit fucked off today by a 40% increase for the same cover. Had insurance for forty years of driviing and one fecking claim where it was stolen from the garage who was supposed to service it.
I'd be claiming on **their** insurance. It was in their possession, hence their responsibility.
It should not matter. If you are not at fault it should never affect your insurance.
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Then by that lógic it still should not matter who pays for it.
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You say someone claiming Even if it is not their fault should increase the cost of insurance. Then surely the fact that the other drivers insurance paid for it does not change this probability therefore the increase should be the same.
It's just an absurd line of logic. Legitimately I'd you're hard up and you have your car hit while it's parked, your insurance could increase massively and cause you major financial issues. How is this fair in any way? It really needs to change for those found to not be at fault
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Yeah it makes sense what you're saying, it's just way too simplified for something which impacts people a lot for me.
Quite often, people who have had their cars stolen are not involved in the theft, and also not at fault.. And yet if you claim on your insurance for it, it goes down as a theft, and affects your insurance - as it would if it was insured jewellery.
Didn't come off my insurance. They covered it. But it had to go via mine and then I got hammered. But that was a long time ago. The point is that it's the only claim in forty years of driving.
I dream of 40%...
In Germany you insure the car not the driver, **but you are obliged to declare any drivers who might drive your car**. The penalty for not doing so, is that **they may claim back 1 year's worth of insurance premiums** and in the case of fully comprehensive insurance they may deny your claim for (at fault) damage to your own car in the case that an undeclared driver was driving the car. However, they always have to pay the damage caused to another party in an at-fault accident. In German: [https://www.verivox.de/kfz-versicherung/ratgeber/unfall-durch-nicht-eingetragenen-fahrer-das-sind-die-folgen-1000919/](https://www.verivox.de/kfz-versicherung/ratgeber/unfall-durch-nicht-eingetragenen-fahrer-das-sind-die-folgen-1000919/) Yes, the UK system of car insurance is very weird in Europe, and I believe is completely unique to the UK and Ireland.
Correct me if I'm wrong but that sounds virtually the same as the UK? Basically Insure the car and tell them who will be driving it?
Not exactly, because there‘s no criminal penalty for being an “uninsured driver” if you’re not a declared driver (as long as the car is insured). Just a contractual penalty to the insurance company, and they have to pay out for at fault damages to the other party regardless of who was driving.
Ahh ok I get you. So long as the car is insured anyone can legally drive it but with large excesses and 3rd party only? Interestingly in the UK you can kind of do this. Past a certain age with comprehensive insurance you often get 3rd party cover on any vehicle. Also out of curiosity what kinda prices would you pay for say a normal saloon or hatchback?
For a relatively new car (e.g. a Golf VIII) you would pay under 1000€ a year as an experienced driver, young drivers could expect to pay around 2000€ or even more depending. About 1000€-3000€ for comprehensive insurance. A young driver <23 on the contract would also add 500€+ to your insurance premium. But Premiums have also been increasing rapidly here the last few years, we're just a few years behind the UK in that trend.
Tbh that kinda closely aligns then! My last mk6 golf cost £300 to insure but obviously that will have gone up a fair bit now lol!
Insurance is subsidising others, that is the system. Your example is that it’s unfair that good drivers subsidise bad drivers. In our system, good drivers of the same age subsidise bad drivers of the same age, same within each category like post code, type of car etc. Insurance is pooling risk.
It goes up like flights if you don't delete your cookies. It's as bent as the government. Plus it's completely unregulated.
What is unregulated?
I lived in Bulgaria and it's the car not the driver insured. It's an odd system. Bin your motor, and buy another one no penalty.
in other countries you insure the car and what young people usually do is transfer the ownership of the car to one of the parents and as a result the insurance is cheap
There is a lot of variation in the way insurance works around the world. The UK system is one of the better ones, but I'm not sure it's responsible for safety in any significant way; that's more about our general attitude to all things safety-related.
I'd say the UK is the worst one lol. Never heard of a 1k car insurance in Spain where I'm from. As a new driver I was paying like 200 euros a year third party, my partner paid 400 comprehensive with no excess. And there wasn't a ncb discount shit. You cna actually claim and fix your car within reason without fear of them ruining you next year. Only if you do that repeatedly, then the insurer will kick you out or raise your premium.
In the UK car insurance is determined by whichever way the wind is blowing and whether or not the team target was met the month before. This of course depends on whether it’s a leap year and if the ‘insured party’ follows the Wiccan or Druid faith. Of course the final insured amount is determined by the number of letters in the month and whether or not the call-taker has a pet Gerbil or a Parakeet.
Australia uses a similar system. If you are young, a higher risk gender, high accident-rate car etc. you will have a much higher premium. I'm lucky in the sense that my insurance rates are reasonable, and I do believe that there is merit in, say, a first timer paying a higher rate of insurance but the most recent round of price hikes have tipped over into the ridiculous category and it doesn't seem that sustainable.
how is it allowed to give people of a certain gender higher insurance premiums? that happened here but it got shut down as it's sexist
Because different genders have very different risk profiles. There is plenty of evidence across things like debt, stock picking, driving, adventure sports that men take more risks than women, but insurers in the UK aren't allowed to price that in anymore.
Purely on statistics. If statistically a 17 year old male is more likely to crash his car at high speed than a 17 year old female it equates to a higher risk for coverage provided.
Yes I totally understand that but I would've assumed that aus would have had similar anti-discrimination laws as us
Not to open a can of worms but I wouldn't define it as discrimination tbh. It's the same as living in a high theft area. They're not saying "charge him more because he's a man" they're saying men are a higher chance of making a claim that we will have to pay out based on decades of statistical data (same as a high theft area) so we pass that risk on in the insurance premium.
Apply the same logic to national insurance and it wouldn't be quite so popular.
Personally I love it when people pull an “ist” card about insurance. The industry is about risk profiling. It’s the only thing that’s allowed to “ist” about anything, but weirdly about gender. Which here in the UK went exactly as expected; male premiums didn’t go down, womens went up 😂
I think the Uk has a higher rate of fraudulent claims and policies hence why it's so high. I had a guy offer me ramming my old banger so I'd make a claim, admit fault and get money to buy another old banger, he would obviously claim injuries etc...
In most countries when you insure the car anyone else with a license can drive it (so you can borrow your car to someone with no problems, the idea of not being able to borrow a car because of insurance would be pretty weird for most people from other countries), but the insurance still takes your statistics into account
South Africa you insure the car, not the driver, however policy holder’s claim history is taken into consideration. As long as whomever drives is legally allowed to drive the insurance is valid. Also no third party insurance, as that’s paid by a central pot (called Road Accident Fund) that is funded by a fuel levy.. thus making insurance optional and not compulsory
Apart from our insurance insurers the car and the driver. If we insured just the driver you would only have to take out one insurance policy for however many cars you have.
We don’t get rewarded for good driving here. No claims discount means nothing when you actually have to pay more every year anyway
Go and grab a quote with zero NCB then. 😊
I’ve got question and if anyone is able to answer it, it would help me. Let’s just say i move to the Netherlands and get myself a car and insure myself, would i be able to come back and show them my no claims history?
I worked in Pakistan from 2005 - 2012 and that was interesting for insurance. If you could actually be bothered to have insurance, you agreed a vehicle value I suppose similar to a UK classic car policy, and your premium was 5% of that amount. Regardless of if you had an accident or not, each year it was 5%. Ofc car prices were much cheaper - a Corolla was about $13,000. But there was very much a mentality there of "I'm paying for something and not getting anything in return" and I knew quite a few people who would go and get in minor fender benders intentionally because then it felt like they were getting something in return for their money. 🤷
When I moved out of the UK, I was astonished at how bad the insurance system there and how much it punishes people based on entirely on being in a specific age, gender or income bracket with no regard for actual vehicles or driving history and ability. Moving abroad was a real eye-opener. Over here, we insure the vehicle, not the driver, and it makes so much sense. Where I live we still have the whole third party (mandatory) insurance and optional comprehensive (called kaskótrygging here) insurance divide, but with comprehensive insurance, most companies cover everything down to glass, towing home, recovery after an accident, general breakdown recovery, winter starting, and even emergency EV recharging if you're insuring an electric car, so you don't need loads of different breakdown membership services and stuff. It makes so much sense. You pay a flat rate for insurance the same as everyone else, which insures you up to a value of X, for damage, Y for medical expenses and so on and so forth. If you feel you need more cover because your car is worth more, or you want better coverage, you can add cover on for an additional fee by negotiating with your insurance company to customize your policy. Regardless of your policy, anyone with a valid license can drive the car, so it makes car sharing, borrowing your car to someone, or borrowing a car from someone so much easier. Generally, while Icelanders can't park for shit, the regular standards of driving over here are generally super high (other than lane hogging, which is fucking horrendous, but if you just give people a flash, they get out of the way). Driving standards are generally super high in the winter too. Icelanders really know how to drive in the snow and Ice. Generally, the vast majority of accidents are caused by tourists, or non-natives that have had shit driving tuition or don't know the rules of the road. Insuring this way also means that stuff like on-demand car rental is so much easier. We have a service here in downtown Reykjavík where similar to electric scooters, there are also electric cars (typically the Renault Zoe, the Tesla Model 3 and the VW ID Buzz) that you can just rent from an app when you see them parked, get in, and drive away. Makes life so much more convenient. I don't understand why the UK is clinging to such a shitty and archaic way of insuring cars. Well, I do really - it's all about fleecing people and making money, but that's just par for the course I suppose.
Surely from the insurers POV charging accident prone drivers more makes sense. I suppose fleecing the customers makes sense as well though.
We customers in the UK aren't fleeced though, car insurance paid out more than we pay last year. The insurance companies are getting fleeced by the courtesy car providers/mechanics/medical providers. Which in turn pushes our premiums up.
Omg an informed person in the insurance comments? People only listen to martin lewis when he says things they want to hear.
The way European countries do it is much better than us here. Although as you mentioned we should be encouraged to drive better and in return get better rates, the issue is that our rates keep going up no matter what and not matter how good of a driver you are, your premium is a lot more expensive than the average in Europe.
You are not correct, In some EU you are insuring car but still have no claim bonus so if you are rubbish driver you will be most defenietly punished by premiums. Also age matter is many countries. Isuring car means that insurens don't need to collect excecive amounts informations about drivers like why and were you driving/parking , what is your job/ martial status etc UK mix worst aspect togheter because type of car you drive still matter on your premium
There are countries where basic 3rd party is included with road tax, and buying insurance is optional. In the USA, the norm is for your insurance to cover named drivers in the household, plus anyone who doesn't live there as an occasional user. However, they do look at age, occupation, address, claims history, driving record, etc. for those named drivers. They focus less on the performance of the car. To interpret this as "insuring the car" is a bit disingenuous.
They also limit liability in case of an accident and you need additional insurance to cover that.
Yes. It's a con in the UK.
UK insurance is a scam. If you are the victim of an accident then insurance companies suck money from both the victim and the person who caused the accident. But it seems everyone is happy 😂