Your existing car insurance provider will contact you a few weeks before your cover is due to renew and it is quite likely that it will be renewed automatically unless you inform your insurer to the contrary. You will be told how much you have been paying for the last 12 months and how much your insurance company intends to charge you for the next year.
Unfortunately too many people do not bother to see if they can get the cover cheaper with another provider and merely accept that their existing policy is going to cost more. It is quite possible that some of those policyholders may have been able to get the cover cheaper elsewhere.
For those that do bother to shop around, did you know that the timing of when you do this might have a bearing upon how much you will end up paying with another provider? According to the well-known price comparison website comparethemarket.com, how close to when your existing cover’s renewal date is could affect how much you will be charged by another provider.
Apparently, if you switch your existing cover three weeks before your policy is due to be renewed then you could save a significant sum of money. The above price comparison website’s research found that if you switched your existing cover on the day of renewal to another provider you would pay an average of £935.06 per annum whereas if you switched your policy three weeks before the renewal date you would pay an average of £563.23 per annum. That is a saving of an average of £371.83 per annum – a significant sum of money.
Its research found that it is younger motorists who may save the most by switching providers three weeks before their renewal date. For instance, someone aged 25 to 29 years of age may pay an average of £1,096.34 per annum on the day that their existing cover is due to be renewed whereas if they had moved their cover three weeks before that date he or she may have paid an average of £652.56 per annum – an average saving of £443.78 per annum. A motorist aged between 65 to 79 may have been able to have saved an average of £186.73 per annum.
So, having received your renewal notice from your existing car insurance provider, you may wish to consider putting a note in your diary for three weeks before your policy is due to be renewed to get some quotations from other providers and see if you are able to save some money.
