The cost of a car insurance policy can vary enormously. There are many factors that can influence how much you have to pay, as well as additional elements of policies which may add extra costs in return for extra services. To find cheaper insurance you have to know what impacts on the cost of your policy so you can consider reducing certain elements that may inflate the quotes that you receive.

One of the major factors that any car insurance company considers is the type of vehicle that you have to drive. The more powerful the engine, the more expensive the car is to repair and the more likely it is to be broken into will all affect the premium. If you have a more expensive car, you will have a higher premium, but cheaper cars are not necessarily cheaper to insure as they can be more likely to break down.
The area in which you live also has an impact. Car insurance companies have a database with statistics of car crime in certain areas so if you live in a high risk area you will have to pay more. Likewise if you have off-road or secure parking like a garage you will have to pay less because you car is less likely to be stolen or broken into.

The amount of time you spend on the road will affect your premiums. If you have high mileage you are more exposed to the risk of an accident and therefore will have to pay more, likewise if you barely drive at all then you will have to pay less.

These are all things over which you can exert a certain element of control, there are, however, certain things that you cannot change that also have a huge impact on your insurance policy. Your age, gender and driving experience will affect your policy. Young drivers are more likely to have accidents, whilst inexperienced drivers are also more statistically likely to be involved in a crash. Women are less likely to make insurance claims than men and therefore are almost always cheaper to insure, all of these things are worthy of consideration but cannot really be easily affected.

Another factor is whether or not you’ve been convicted for motoring offences in the past or have a bad accident record. Both of these are likely to make an insurance company think you are more of a risk to insure than a driver with a clean record and therefore your policy will cost you more.

Whatever your personal circumstances you can always save money on your insurance. There are insurance providers out there who offer specialist deals to certain demographics or to drivers of certain cars, whilst there are often ‘policy sweeteners’ with providers, for example, Co-operative Insurance offer up to 11% off their insurance policies online (take a look at their site for a car insurance quote). When it comes to shopping for a policy, make sure you know what you’re looking for and take a good look around before you buy.

Susan Kehan is a keen writer about car insurance and home insurance products.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 10:51 am and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.