GTI Insurance

[Flashredpolo]

Anyone recommend a good insurer for modified cars?

I'm looking at fitting a Milltek cat-back exhaust. I found a company who will supply it cheapest and even got a quote for getting it fitted (£60 reasonable I thought?) But when I went to get a quote from my insurer (hastings) they straight up decline to even quote. My renewal with them was £700 ish which was best price by a decent margin. I've been on many insurance sites and the quotes range between £2k-4k which is just insane.

I'm just completely out of ideas and am open to any suggestions.

Many thanks

[KayakerPaul]

Anyone recommend a good insurer for modified cars?

I'm looking at fitting a Milltek cat-back exhaust. I found a company who will supply it cheapest and even got a quote for getting it fitted (£60 reasonable I thought?) But when I went to get a quote from my insurer (hastings) they straight up decline to even quote. My renewal with them was £700 ish which was best price by a decent margin. I've been on many insurance sites and the quotes range between £2k-4k which is just insane.

I'm just completely out of ideas and am open to any suggestions.

Many thanks

There`s an insurance name from the past, my good old scoobie days. They insured my 2 cars no issues many years ago. 1 was modified with the prodrive decat exhaust and larger rear spoiler, and possibly the 2nd car factory ordered with the PPP, but that did have a tracker. How times have changed.
Only suggestion I have is to leave exhaust alone at that price ,is it really worth it ?

[SRGTD]

@Flashredpolo; The price comparison sites are geared up primarily to cater for high volume, commoditised business - i.e. standard vehicles with no modifications - so are unlikely to be the best place to get cover for a vehicle with performance-related modifications at a competitive premium. I dare say Hastings business model may not accommodate anything other than ‘standard’ risks without modifications, hence why they wouldn’t cover you with a car back exhaust fitted to your car even though you’re an existing customer. If Hastings do cover only standard risks they won’t need to incur the expense of employing specialist underwriters with the appropriate knowledge of modified cars to consider, asses and quote for non-standard (modified) vehicles - and that will help them to be price competitive for standard business.

There are insurance brokers that specialise in insurance for modified vehicles. Some of these brokers are likely to have special scheme arrangements with certain insurance companies where they may have negotiated specially discounted premium rates. If you Google ‘insurance for modified vehicles’ you’ll find a selection of specialist brokers you could try - I’ve just done this and there are some that I recognise - e.g. A Plan, Adrian Flux, Brentacre, Keith Michaels, Performance Direct, Safely Insured; there will be others too. I’ve not personally used a broker who specialises in modified vehicles so can’t vouch for how competitive a price they could get you. However, it’s worth trying a few - they’ll do the legwork for you and search the market, and they’re likely to have ready access to some mod-friendly insurance companies who’re not on comparison sites too.

As an aside, I was previously insured with Aviva at the time I changed my OEM alloys to a set of aftermarket alloys and they covered the modification without any issues. I then changed my insurance to LV= last year and they also covered me / my car with aftermarket alloys. At my policy renewal this year I got some alternative quotes and Aviva would no longer quote for me; I can only assume that Aviva have either changed their underwriting strategy in relation to modifications or they will only cover modifications for existing customers.

Good luck - please keep this discussion thread updated for the benefit of other forum members who might find themselves in a similar situation to yourself.

[Flashredpolo]

Many thanks for your responses, I'll make some calls on Monday and update with any findings

[MikeDO]

How about someone like: AdrianFLUX?
https://www.adrianflux.co.uk/

[Flashredpolo]

Adrian flux offered at £3800 per year.

Might just have to live without the mods for a bit

[S_94]

I've heard https://www.brentacre.co.uk/ are good. Can't speak for them myself, only from various forums/facebook pages.

[Bepis]

Currently looking at £1900~ on a stock 6C up from £1700 last year with Hastings.

20 years old, 3 years driving and NCB, clean license, 16k miles SDPC.

Meanwhile, a mate just paid £900 for a fiesta ST with a years less driving and NCB, a speeding conviction and less than 10 miles away from my address. With hastings .

Seems insurers hate me, my car at my address .

Giving Chris Knotts a go this year to see what they come back with.

[SRGTD]

Currently looking at £1900~ on a stock 6C up from £1700 last year with Hastings.

20 years old, 3 years driving and NCB, clean license, 16k miles SDPC.

Meanwhile, a mate just paid £900 for a fiesta ST with a years less driving and NCB, a speeding conviction and less than 10 miles away from my address. With hastings .

Seems insurers hate me, my car at my address .

Giving Chris Knotts a go this year to see what they come back with.

Insurance companies use so many risk factors these days when calculating premiums, and the algorithms they use are very complex. Also, a single risk factor can have a significant impact on an individual’s premium. I think that insurance companies will also use some risk factors that you might not automatically associate with car insurance such as an individual’s credit rating. Factors that could contribute towards differences in yours and your friend’s premiums might be;

• differences in the annual mileage driven by you and your friend

• your respective occupations

• any other drivers on your policies and their accident / claims history

• whether your relatively higher premium includes elements of cover not included in your friend’s policy - e.g. breakdown cover, provision of a courtesy car, legal expenses

• the amount of voluntary excess (if any) chosen

• repair costs of a VW compared to a Ford; maybe average repair costs on VW’s are higher?, and insurance companies will reflect this in their prices

At the end of the day, it’s all a bit of a mystery and I don’t think we’ll ever understand how our premiums are calculated.

Bear in mind that with Hastings, they are an insurance intermediary rather than an insurance company, and they use a panel of insurers comprising of a number of different insurance companies to place business. Panels of insurance companies are fairly commonplace - e.g. AA insurance use a panel, as do Lloyds bank - there are many other large intermediaries that do too. Large intermediaries favour using a panel of different insurance companies as it increases the likelihood of them winning a customer’s business - e.g. if one of the insurance companies on their panel won’t quote, or quotes a high (uncompetitive) premium for a customer, then there’s a good chance there’ll be another insurer on the panel who will quote a cheaper, more competitive premium, increasing the chance of winning that customer’s business. There’s a good chance you and your friend with the Fiesta ST will be insured with different insurance companies on the Hastings panel and those insurers may have different underwriting strategies and approaches to insurance risk in relation to young drivers, which could go some way towards explaining the difference in yours and your friend’s premiums.

I agree, it’s always worth trying other companies when your policy is due to renew (I do this) as insurance companies rarely - if ever - reward loyalty. When you shop around, don’t leave it until the last minute as insurers have a tendency to increase their prices the closer you are to your policy renewal date - IMHO it’s best to get alternative quotes from a range of insurance companies 2 - 3 weeks before your policy renewal date. Also, bear in mind that cheapest isn’t necessarily the best - an insurance company offering the cheapest price might mean they’re cheap for a reason; e.g. they may cut corners on their claims service, and if you are unfortunate enough to need claim for repairs, you want the repairs to be good quality and of a high standard.

[Bepis]

I believe it’s primarily the address as if he changed his address to mine then his policy jumps anywhere from £500 to a grand. Which I can’t really do anything about

10k vs 16k miles worked out to about £100- £200 extra depending on the day of the quote.

Having the policy start 3 weeks after the quote was given saved around £700

Black box saves £700 but who is going to put a black box in a GTi

My insurance renewal falls almost a month after my birthday so last year I was getting quotes of 4 grand and up but waited a week after and they halved. Even though the policy would start after making me still 19 when the policy would’ve started. Seems their algorithms are only taking the age from the date of the quote rather than the policy start date. Seems like a bit of an oversight from a software point of view but wether it’s negligence or by design I’ll let you make your own mind up.

Some things to note. Upping the cars value from trade to market value decreased the policy by £90 and saying it had a tracker upped the policy by £90

Changing my job to other relevant things for “IT” made little to no difference.

Credit score is higher than average for my area but I always pay my policy in full as to not have another form of credit on file.

Any basic modifications like an exhaust, intake, “uprated brakes” (which is nice and vague considering you could have just better pads or 4 piston Brembos and bigger discs) or braided lines they just flat out refused a quote. However having aftermarket alloy wheels with a value of less than a grand reduced my policy by £200

Personally I think the “algorithms” are just insurers throwing darts at a dartboard.

[Bepis]

Bear in mind that with Hastings, they are an insurance intermediary rather than an insurance company, and they use a panel of insurers comprising of a number of different insurance companies to place business

After checking our documents, to rub salt in the wound we're both with the same insurance company through hastings

The extra I paid for motor legal, breakdown, and courtesy car equated to roughly £150 over my base premium. So it seems to all be address and car even though the Polo GTi is group 29E and the fiesta ST is 30E.