New to car insurance - Advice & Help

[Linzie2012]

Hi,

My partner is currently learning to drive & will be going through his test within the month (hopefully pass first time )

We've bought a car today, as its ideal may not be around when he passes. We now want to insure it but need advice.

1 - He is on a UK Provisional at the moment. Do I need to add a additional driver? (Has no intention of driving it without a Full Holder with him)

2 - Would you recommend Fully Comp, 3rd Party or Fire & Thief for first timers on insurance.

The plan was to pay annually, But the car came before the savings got that far.

What would you recommend?

 

[Little_angel]

It's been a long time since I worked in insurance (nearly 20 years!) but the policies I worked on didn't allow a provisional driver not to have another full licence holder as a driver on the policy. I'd imagine that may vary from company to company though.

Whether you should go for fully comp or TPFT depends on how much the car is worth and how much the premiums are. For eg, if the car is worth £500 and the annual cost of fully comp is several hundred pounds more than TPFT (which it can sometimes be) it's not worth paying for. Don't forget as a new driver he'll probably have a large excess, so will have to pay the first part of the claim anyway, so for a car of low value what you'll actually get for the car itself will be very little.

If you've bought a new or high value car, especially on finance, fully comp is probably a good idea if you can afford it.

There's a useful adage "Don't insure what you can afford to lose". The word "afford" might be a bit odd there, but it really means don't bother paying for cover that you won't benefit greatly from. It's a bit like gambling, you might win once, but if you do it regularly over a period of years you will come out worse off.

It's probably going to be quite expensive I'm afraid, as you won't have any "no claims bonus" and especially as a provisional driver. Paying monthly is not necessarily a bad thing, most insurers prefer it and they often don't charge any more.

 

[Linzie2012]

Thanks for that explains alot.

Car was £800, alot of us but it isn;t a expensive couple of thousand type of thing. Just a local run around for when baby is here plus our 5 dogs

I think Third Party should be fine.

 

[Little_angel]

I think you're right, because I wouldn't be surprised if the insurance is more than that.

 

[Linzie2012]

Managed to find a quote at £650.00 but I think that maybe wrong !!

Most are hitting £900.00 odd plus !