Is this a dishonest way to reduce the cost of insurance?

A friend bought a very low insurance group car that was an old banger. He insured himself on the car with no intention to drive it. The car was stored off-road on SORN. As the car was not being driven there was 100% chance that he would not make an insurance claim. A few years later he had built up a no claims bonus for a car that he would actually drive and cut his premium by more than half (according to a comparison website). In the intervening years he had spent most time living outside of Britain.

Is this a dishonest way to reduce the cost of insurance?

A friend bought a very low insurance group car that was an old banger. He insured himself on the car with no intention to drive it. The car was stored off-road on SORN. As the car was not being driven there was 100% chance that he would not make an insurance claim. A few years later he had built up a no claims bonus for a car that he would actually drive and cut his premium by more than half (according to a comparison website). In the intervening years he had spent most time living outside of Britain.

Is this a dishonest way to reduce the cost of insurance?

A friend bought a very low insurance group car that was an old banger. He insured himself on the car with no intention to drive it. The car was stored off-road on SORN. As the car was not being driven there was 100% chance that he would not make an insurance claim. A few years later he had built up a no claims bonus for a car that he would actually drive and cut his premium by more than half (according to a comparison website). In the intervening years he had spent most time living outside of Britain.

Is this a dishonest way to reduce the cost of insurance?

I have always thought surely people could do this if they know they want to get a car that's more expensive to insure in at least a year but don't want to drive now. What it shows is that the pricing system should change...perhaps the discount should not be as much if you are taking out a policy on a car that's more expensive to insure than the previous one? Perhaps some insurance rates should come down to reflect the fact that you could have done this?

Just a thought though, if this is your plan then surely you should put your mileage estimate down as 0 on the car...is that even possible? If not, maybe put the lowest mileage you can and drive that number of miles for the sake of it!

I am a high mileage driver and have always thought that I should be earning my no-claims bonus faster...if I drive 2/3 times as far as the average driver and don't crash, surely that makes me lower risk? But then perhaps it needs to cut the other way as well...people like me are effectively subsidising people like you. I'm all for exploiting legal loopholes though as long as they don't hurt anyone.

Your high mileage will be an increased risk factor. Your greater experience and lack of claims will be a decreased risk factor.

The insurance companies take it all into account.

Posted from TSR Mobile

To be 100% clear: the high cost of insurance for a new/young driver is mostly to cover the third party risk not the value of the insured vehicle. New cars are safer, better maintained and treated better by the driver.

Insuring an "old banger" can be more expensive than a new or nearly new car.

Insurance premiums are based on accident statistics so a popular car could end up being more expensive to insure than a rarer car simply because the more popular car is crashed more often.

My insurance premium for a car with a 1.5L engine was lower than that for other people from my area of similar age with cars with 1.2L engines. I assume it was because it was a fairly uncommon model and not one that was popular with a younger age group.

I read somewhere that insurance companies were increasing premiums for many older cars because of potentially weak security but I don't have any more information about this.

What were his annual premiums? If you do this as a new/young driver the premiums would still be prohibitive.

Nope lmao, ya boy played the system fairly and simultaneously proved how stupid insurance premium calculations are.