Family car insurance

How to find the best car insurance for your family

Family car insurance is what keeps most car insurance companies in business. The cars tend to be sensible and built more for comfort and space, rather than speed and show; drivers tend to be over 25 and therefore past the sometimes reckless driving years. Plus; there are few things that will make a driver more careful on the road than the knowledge that the safety of the family is in his or her hands.

Consequently, given a reasonable driving record and provided the family lives in a fairly safe neighbourhood most insurers are more than happy to welcome drivers like this as clients, secure in the knowledge that once they have them on board they are likely to stay as customers for some years to come.

The problem, from the insurance company's point of view, is that there is a lot of competition for this type of business; good news for the customers of course because in order to attract them a lot of companies are prepared to offer very attractive initial discounts to those motorists who are prepared to leave their current insurers and join them. Once the first year has passed however renewal premiums almost inevitably move sharply upwards, and an astute motorist keeps a wary eye on this. One of the clever ways in which many insurers avoid the risk of clients accepting substantial initial discounts and then leaving at the end of the year for another discount with another company is to persuade them to pay yearly by direct debit; this is just another form of 'inertia selling', and relies on the fact that something like 80% of motorists will just accept renewal premiums year after year, without checking any other offers. This can be very costly, since there is almost inevitably a better price available elsewhere, so the moral is to refuse to agree to direct debits and check other options every year rather than allow the current insurer to charge pretty much what they wish.

It is very rare that insurance premiums remain the same throughout the year, most insurers run special offers but it can be extremely tiresome getting one quote after another and this is why price comparison engines have become so popular, because you will be able to find the lowest quotations, including any current introductory bonuses, that are available to you on the particular day that you run a search. Things are not always the way they appear to be however; many of the bigger price comparison sites are in fact owned by insurance companies themselves, and they would not be human if they did not present their own products in a good light! Quotezone however have a completely independent search engine which can provide you with quotations not only from the some of the biggest insurers in the UK but also from many of the smaller and more specialised companies, all of whom would be delighted to attract more family car insurance business.

Is life getting too serious? Check here for a spoof on short term car insurance