To work out the price of your insurance, we weigh up many factors. Some of these are specific to you, whereas others are to do with the world around you and what’s happening in the insurance market.
Everyone who buys insurance pays into a central pot and, if you make a claim, we pay it out of that pot. If the numbers and costs of claims increase, the pot needs to go further, which means prices can go up.
But whatever happens, we constantly review the way we calculate the cost of car insurance to make sure we offer you the most accurate price.
On this page, we’ve explained some of the factors which can affect your price.
Before your current policy comes to an end, we’ll send you a renewal invitation Footnote [1] . It will show two prices – last year’s price and a price for continuing cover for another year.
As you’re already a customer with us, your price to renew your cover will be the same as or lower than the equivalent price for a new customer.
Over the past year, insurance prices have gone up across the UK. Various factors have played a role in this, such as a shortage of parts, materials, and workers, which has led to price increases. This coupled with the European energy crisis has driven up inflation in the UK.
If the specific cover you have with us isn’t available to new customers any more, we’ll compare your renewal price against the new customer price of the policy which most closely matches yours.
Frequently asked questions
It’s almost certainly because you made a change to your policy during the last 12 months which affected the price of your cover.
Your renewal invite will show how much your current cover would have cost over the whole of the last year if that change had been in place from day one. This gives a better like-for-like comparison between last year’s premium and your new premium.
Prices don’t always change because of something you’ve done. For example, the total cost of all claims made during the last year, more expensive repair costs or severe weather could have made your price go up. There are also external factors that might mean your insurance costs more or less, including changes to regulations and inflation.
Insurance regulation changes released in January 2022 mean we've had to change the way we previously calculated our prices. These changes don’t necessarily mean your renewal price will be lower than last year’s price, as other factors could also impact your price, such as those mentioned on this page.
Your price includes any no claims discount you are entitled to.
Once you have three years’ no claim discount, you have the option to protect your no claim discount and reduce the possible impact of a future claim on your next renewal price, and there would be an additional cost for this.
It’s likely that what you’ve seen is not an identical policy. The insurance product we offer directly is different to the product we offer through price comparison websites.
Whichever product you have, we’ll make sure it’s priced in line with the latest regulations.
We offer our customers the ability to pay for their insurance either annually or monthly.
If you choose to pay monthly, for most of our insurance products, it will be more expensive than paying annually. This is because, essentially, you are taking out a 12-month loan with us. With most loans/credit arrangements an interest rate is applied to the amount borrowed, which will increase the total amount you pay.
We will run a full credit check when we offer you an initial quote. If you go on to take out an insurance policy with us, we will re-run this check for every renewal offered. The interest amount you pay will be variable and may change each year you continue to insure with us and will be calculated based on our view of the risk of lending to you under your credit agreement.
