Local service for local people

February 11, 2014

One of the advantages of being able to offer a local service is that it is easier to answer insurance-related questions with specific reference to local events and local issues.

Here at Alan Blunden Motor Insurance Brokers, we have been answering our customers’ questions on various aspects of insurance since 1946. In this brief article, we’ll share one or two of the more frequently asked questions that we’ve encountered recently on the subject of motor insurance.

What would you advise us to do to keep our car insurance premiums as low as possible?

You can’t really give a single answer to this question because a lot will depend upon things such as your age, the car you drive, how often you use it and so on.

However, a few very general possibilities might include:

• consider only covering your car for the legal minimum of third party liability (potentially a very risky approach);
• opt for a higher voluntary excess where the policy allows you to do so;
• obtain expert local brokerage advice in terms of finding the most appropriate car insurance.  Southend and surrounding areas are obviously ones we are intimately familiar with;
• try to remove any additional high-risk and therefore expensive drivers from your policy (e.g. those with driving convictions or who are very young).

Why not contact us directly for a further discussion in this area?

Do I now need to keep my car insured even if it is off the road?

This question typically relates to the government’s new regulations and the associated SORN (Statutory Off-Road Notification) process.

However, before dealing with that it might be worth considering whether it would ever have been of wise, even when the law allowed, to have cancelled your car insurance when your vehicle was temporarily off the road.

Even if it was in your garage pending repair, it could have been stolen or damaged by circumstances such as fire etc.

However, changes in the law now mean that you must keep a road licence and at least third party liability on your vehicle even if it is off the road – unless you have officially notified the DVLA through the SORN procedure. The detailed process and the logic behind this are fully covered on the DVLA website.

Why is there excess on a car insurance policy?

The amount that an insurance company pays out each year in claims is directly related to how much they will need to charge for their policies in future years.

As such, it is in the interests of policyholders and insurers alike to try to manage the total amount paid out in claims in order to help keep car insurance policies as reasonably priced as possible.

One approach used by insurance companies to help achieve this is to ask the policyholder to make a specified amount of contribution to the cost of any future claim.  That amount is called the policy’s excess or sometimes the first part of any future claim.

This is a very commonplace and normal part of insurance life though it’s sometimes misunderstood by some policyholders.  It does not exist to help policy providers find reasons to avoid paying out on claims but actually to help keep premiums lower for everyone.

*Source:

https://www.gov.uk/register-sorn-statutory-off-road-notification