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Top tips on Motorbike insurance quotes
ONE: Let someone else shop around for you. Apart from Norwich Union, the vast majority of companies that advertise in the motor bike insurance market are effectively brokers. They tend to deal with a panel of different insurance companies and find the best priced or most suitable for each customer. Express Insurance, for example, reckons it has around 16 providers on its books, some rivals claim to link up with even more. The good news is that if you approach a handful of brokers you should be able to spread your net really widely.
Throw in a couple of other organisations such as The AA which have linked to specialists of their own and you can be assured you have covered most of the market. Almost every provider will offer no obligation quotes by phone or online. Putting aside half an hour or so for some calls or surfing can save a decent amount of cash. Top tip: check your broker is authorised to offer policies on the ‘firm check’ page at www.fsa.gov.uk.
TWO: Get the right policy. Even the experts admit that bike cover is one of the most complicated insurance products around. It’s not just because premiums depend on everything from your age, occupation, sex, address and the type of bike you ride. A host of extra bells and whistles on different policies make it difficult to compare like with like – which is just what some insurers want as they rely on confusion marketing to win them business. So cut things down to the essentials and speak to people who don’t just read out scripts from computer screens when they sell a policy.
Scott Walker of Europa, which offers policies through The AA, says most of his staff are bikers themselves, which should help them talk callers through their options. Other long-established bike companies such as Bennetts are also staffed with bike owners so you should get expert help there as well. Just like car cover you’ll get a choice of third party, third party fire and theft and comprehensive cover. Some specialists like Carole Nash will offer extras like breakdown recovery and European cover for free. Others charge different amounts for the additional services and it’s worth asking for quotes both with and without them. That way you can check the money you save on one part of a policy isn’t just taken away again on another.
THREE: Grab some discounts. Security is one of the biggest problems for bike owners – some 35,000 bikes are stolen each year and the police admit little more than 15 per cent of them are ever recovered. So if you can garage your bike at nights you should get a cheaper insurance quote.
Paying a few hundred pounds for a proper tracker device can also cut your costs. Premiums are also lower for women and cost for men fall dramatically after the age of 25. Bike insurers do offer no claims discounts, just like car cover. And the increasing number of over 50s who surveys show are returning to bikes after a couple of decades on four wheels can get extra discounts if they take safety training. The Institute of Advance Motorists and the British Motorcyclists Federation offer the best courses. Finally Bennetts says multi-bike policies can produce big savings for the estimated 200,000 riders who own more than one bike. It reckons we are collectively wasting £23 million by paying full price to insure every bike we own separately rather than getting the multiple-owner discounts.
FOUR: Don’t pay for your policy the wrong way. Experts say that all the savings you make on a keenly priced policy can be wiped out if you sign up to an expensive direct debit scheme. Researcher Money Expert has just looked at most of these ‘easy terms’ deals and found the interest rates charged can top 30 per cent. ‘The direct debit trap is almost always a nasty surprise and with insurance companies it comes at a high price,’ says Sean Gardner of Money Expert. So if you can afford to pay the full premium in a lump sum then you will be better off. In many cases it is worth putting the cost on your credit card and paying a bit of interest there for a couple of months rather than using your insurer’s so-called easy payment terms.
FIVE: Never stick to one insurance policy for too long. It’s worth shopping around every time your policy comes up for renewal. Firms often offer super-low prices to new customers on the hope that they can get their money back by charging above average rates later on. So don’t assume last year’s best-buy provider will be good value 12 months later. Finally, if you’re buying another bike it also pays to check it out properly. Credit reference firm Experian has a tracing service that aims to stop stolen or damaged bikes being resold. Find out more at Checkabike.
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