Car insurance fronting is where someone takes out a car insurance policy and claims that he or she is the main driver of the vehicle but adds a named driver to the policy and it is the named driver who spends more time behind the wheel of the car driving it around. So, why would someone do this?
Well, as you will see from some previous posts, young motorists tend to pay significantly more for their car insurance than a more experienced driver. So, fronting is sometimes used by parents to help their son or daughter be insured to drive a car with the parent incorrectly claiming that he or she is going to be the main driver of the vehicle thus resulting in a lower premium when in fact it is actually the sibling who spends more time at the wheel.
When calculating how much the premium will be, the insurance company will consider numerous factors with one of those being how experienced the main driver is. On average, one would expect a parent aged say 40 to 50 to be more experienced at driving a car that his or her son or daughter who is say 19 years of age. Therefore you would expect the premium to be lower when the main driver is the parent and the additional driver is the son or daughter. If this were reversed and the main driver is the 19 year old son or daughter with the parent being an additional driver who drives the car less frequently than their son or daughter then you would normally expect the premium to be higher.
A typical example of fronting is where mum or dad takes out car insurance and claims to be the main driver and names their son or daughter as a named driver but the son or daughter is at university in say halls of residence and keeps and drives the car whilst at university. In that case, it is the sibling who is going to be viewed as the main driver.
Fronting is fraudulent and can lead to a criminal conviction, getting points on your license, being fined and making it more difficult to get competitively priced car insurance. Also, in the event if a claim, if the car insurance provider can prove fronting, then they could refuse to pay out. Getting car insurance in the future may be more difficult and more expensive. So, it really isn’t worth taking the risk of getting involved in fronting.
