Car Insurance UK - Review

A look at how best to go about getting car insurance in the UK

These days, it is usual for most drivers to turn to a price comparison system to find their car insurance. These services are undoubtedly a quick and easy way to find low cost car insurance given that you need to complete only one form to then get numerous quotes from 100s or even 1000s of car insurance providers.

Yet price alone is only part of the picture. Many people in other contexts will use price as a marker of quality. The higher the price, the more likely the product is to deliver on quality considerations. The cheaper you go the less you get.

There is a difference of course when it comes to insurance. If you buy a cheap sound system, for example, you'll know as soon as you use it that the quality of reproduction is relatively poor. Buy very cheap car insurance and you (in the absence of an accident) will face no adverse consequences at all. In addition, you've saved yourself money, perhaps over a hundred pounds.

Buying a car insurance policy that would fail to deliver what you would want if you need to claim is, it can be easily argued, not a prudent approach, however. While you may get away with it in the absence of a claim, you may not. Car insurance should be selected on the basis of what you would need in an accident.

In view of the relatively high cost of car insurance, a degree of pragmatism in terms of what you must have included in your cover is sensible but to buy 'blind' on the basis of price alone is likely to be storing up trouble for the future when, sooner or later, you need to claim.

It's important to be aware that as more and more people use price comparison systems, more and more car insurance companies are obliged to compete in this arena on the basis of price. To do this, quality drops and the excess increases with the effect that costs are returned back to the driver in the event of a claim. The cheapest of no frills cover - which the best price of thousands of quotes has to be - is very likely to leave much out that the majority of people would, with good reason, expect to be included as standard.

The message is as follows. Know what you're getting and don't compromise too far on cover to save money if there are policy features that you consider important to retain.

If it's essential to check over the car insurance policy features, how easy is it to do this when you use a price comparison site? Well, it depends on the site, of course, but it's fair to say that, at best, these services tend to provide summarised policy data. For this reason, we continue to advise people to check with the car insurer's website direct for full policy information before making a final choice.

This brings us to how, in many ways, price comparison sites are less useful than they may seem at first glance. These sites give prominence to the cheaper car insurance products. Yet these are the very car insurance policies that drivers, generally speaking, may want to bypass in favour of those that represent a better balance between cost and cover. Such policies may not be the cheapest but they will serve you better in an accident.

However, because price comparison sites don't make it particularly easy to research the best policy for your needs, if done properly, your research could involve having to check over several policies directly with their providers.

The better the cover you seek, the more cumbersome this process becomes. The logical consequence is that if you aim to build in a reasonable level of quality control and you want a competitively priced car insurance policy, selecting from market-leaders direct is actually a sound choice.  In a competitive insurance market, like for like policies are always closely priced when you select from the larger, well-established insurance companies.

You can find a list of the top companies that we would suggest for your car insurance right here. They provide policy information to help you choose.

Of course, there are some situations where using a price comparison site is a good first choice. We would suggest, however, that these are best reserved for specific groups rather than for the general motoring public. Examples where using a price comparison site to compare car insurance is justified would include the young driver, the new driver or a driver with previous driving convictions, including speeding charges. The common denominator of these is that the cost of cover would be expected to be high and this calls for a higher level of pragmatism in terms of must-have features, rendering the 'no frills' end of the spectrum more attractive. More..
recommended | advice | get-quotes