Insuring your pride and joy

Are you thinking about renewing your car insurance? Maybe you are looking at ways to save money and benefit from new customer incentives? Or maybe you are not satisfied with the service and level of cover offered by your current insurer? Whatever the reason, finding the right insurance at the right price is no easy task.

Most of us tend to check about three companies for comparison, usually by phone. But a good place to start is online with price comparison websites. You don’t necessarily have to buy your insurance through one of these websites, but they give you a good idea where to start and what price range you should be looking at.

Staying on the Internet is also another way to save money. Buying online can save you around 20% when compared to buying over the phone.

You can also save money on your annual premium by increasing the excess you are willing to pay in the event of an accident. Seeing as actually making a claim is quite rare and because of no-claims bonuses we all like to avoid claiming, this is a clever way to lower your monthly outgoings.

What if you have a specialist or classic car, do you need to get specific insurance? Well depending on the value of your car it might pay to do so. However, Kwik Fit Insurance for example, says although they don’t sell specific classic-car insurance, they pay out the market value on your car and classic car policies should be investigated fully because they are much more expensive than your standard policy and don’t always offer the same benefits. So a standard policy coving the vehicle at market value might actually work better for you.

Taking Kwik Fit Insurance as an example again. They offer a 20% discount for buying online, a free MOT and 10% off at all Kwik Fit servicing centres. Therefore all these extras might make a specialist car insurance policy seem a bit redundant. Take a look at Kwik Fit Insurance’s site to see if their car insurance is right for you.

However, going back to price comparison sites, these prove most valuable when you want to compare different types of policy quickly. So you can put a specialist car policy up against a standard policy to weight up the pros and cons then check out the insurer direct.

Finally, make sure you know the market value of your car. There are plenty of services out there to help you establish this and it will make choosing the right car insurance for you and your needs much easier.