Car insurance is new to most of you, so in this article we discuss how you can better understand car insurance on a whole

Step 1: Ensure you're getting the correct cover

Insurance premiums (the name of payments made to insurance companies) depend on the insurane companies, the level of cover and how risky you're perceived to be. Therefore start by defining your cover and ensuring you’re as low a risk as possible, which SHOULD make it cheaper.

Things often aren’t as straightforward as you think, for example counter logically fully comprehensive cover can be cheaper than third party policies, so always check, ask for quotes on both covers. More info on the third party vs fully comprehensive insurance saga are here. 

Beware 'pay monthly' options - usually the insurer actually just loans you the annual cost and then charges interest at hideous rates on top. So either pay in full, or if you can't afford it, use a credit card with a lower APR rate (or, a 0% credit card for spending ensuring your repayments are big enough to clear it within a year.) This is a recommended method of payment.

Tweaking your job desription to save money?

Insurers decide prices depending on historic risk assessments, and your occupation plays an important part in this. Money Saving Expert have built a tool to show the riskiest jobs and see if small tweaks to your job description could save you cash.Visit their website for details.

Step 2: Correctly combine comparison sites

Comparison sites zip your details to hosts of insurers' and brokers' websites, scraping their data off the screens to report back the cheapest. Yet as they don't all compare the same sites, to maximise the spread of quotes, you need to combine them, so we've analysed the order that gets you the max. As a young driver, your probably better buying your insurance through us, that way you need not waste time looking for insurance companies on comparison sites that doen't insure you. 

Once you’ve found the cheapest; there are two important checks to make:

• Double check the quotes

Click through to the insurance provider's own website to double check the quotes, as to speed up searches some comparison sites make a few assumptions (see what to check).

• Examine the policy's coverage

Check whether it's suitable. So if you want "free car hire" if your car is being fixed, isit included? Plus while you’re there it's worth playing with the policy details to see if you can finesse the price down; look at the excess, and whether adding drivers cuts the cost.

Specialist cover inc. young drivers, provsional license holders and multi car. 

If you’re looking for specific cover, the mass nature of comparison sites may not find the very best results. These additional notes should help you cut further chunks off.

If you have two or more vehicles between friends or family members in your household (vans included but bikes tend not to be), some providers offer discounts if you insure them all together which is becoming more popular. 

Comparing manually on the internet is needed sometimes as comparison sites dont have the technology to do so.

First use comparisons for each car separately

The discounts are usually around 10%, so often it's likely just finding the cheapest standalone insurer will win anway, so always do a comparison first, then try the deals below to compare

Get all cars on one policy

Cover two cars and Admiral* will give a 10% discount, cover four or five and you could get a 23% discount. All cars will then be covered on one policy so the renewal date will be aligned to end at the same time.

Separate policies but still get the discount

Other insurers allow cars to have separate policies but give a discount as long as the vehicles are in the same household. Privilege*give 10% off, Direct Line*10% off, Churchill*(who also cover named drivers on another Churchill policy) 10% off and Aviva*up to 15% off.

While it says it gives reductions Tesco doesn't say how much the discount will be, so check before you buy any type of insurance that says things like this. Other tricks to cut the cost

If you aren't a young driver, but still want to look for an even better deal, try some of the following...

• Prices change at different times of the month

There's a technique to see if you can get cheaper cover at different times of the month; but its a little time consuming...

Run your quotes a month before renewal and click through to the cheapest three insurers' sites making sure you save the quotes. Some, although not all, hold their prices for up to 28 days. Then, nearer your renewal date go back to check the price and buy if it's cheaper, or revert back to the saved quote if it's not.

• Guarantee to beat your renewal by 10%

If the comparison services above haven’t found a policy cheaper than your existing quote, First Direct says it will beat new customer's renewal quote from their previous insurer by at least 10%, providing your annual premium is over £200 for comprehensive or £120 for non-comprehensive.

• Temporary Car Insurance

It's possible to get temporary insurance for 1 to 28 days, such as to to drive a friends car protecting their policy and no claims. Budget's Temporary Insurance, Insure Daily, TempCover.com* and RAC are amongst some of the available policies.

Good luck everyone!

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