Multi Car Insurance

Having a car is undoubtedly a necessity in this modern day and age. While most people own just one car, there are some families who have two or more cars in their household. Of course, if both the husband and wife need to drive to work and have to go separate ways, you cannot rely on one of them to drop the other. Circumstances like this often lead to the purchase of a second car to make things simple. However this decision mean that costs are likely to increase because of the higher consumption of petrol, more road tax, more MOT, more car insurance because there are now two vehicles to be maintained. Even little savings can make a huge difference sometimes and this is why people who own more than 1 car should look into multi-car insurance policies so that they pay less in premiums in a bid to keep costs down.

Being a legal requirement, you cannot drive a car without insurance. So if you have 5 cars sitting in your driveway, you will need to have insurance cover for all of them if you want to drive them all. Getting separate insurance policies for each vehicle will cost you a lot of money, therefore you should look into combining the insurance for all the cars into one single policy. You will find that if you have any no claims bonus, it can only be applied to one car at a time. This means that for your second car insurance, you will not have any discounts at all. Say, for example, you have 5 years NCB and you’ve used that on your first car. After a couple of months, if you buy a second car and decide to get insurance for it, you will not be able to use that 5 years NCB on that second car because you’ve already used it on the first one.

With multi car insurance, you get a discount for the additional car that you insure with the same company. The reason for giving you a discount is simple – you bring them more business, they make more money and to say thank you, they give you a discount. By offering cheaper premiums, insurance companies can entice you to insure with them rather than going with their competitor.

Getting the best car insurance for multiple vehicles

Of course getting a multi-discount for two or more cars is great but if you go after cheap quotes which don’t offer too much flexibility, then you will soon regret it. Here’s what you should be looking for when it comes to multicar insurance policies:

• Do all the cars have the same date of renewal for the insurance policy? If yes, you need to budget properly so that you have enough money to pay off the premiums when it’s due.
• What payment options do you have? Can you pay by monthly instalments so that you can spread the costs instead of having to pay a huge sum in one go?
• What happens if one driver under the multi car insurance policy has an accident? Will the policyholder lose his NCD if it wasn’t him who was driving and had the accident?
• Can all the drivers listed on the policy drive all the cars? If you have 5 cars and 3 drivers are named on the policy, will they all be able to drive those 3 cars?

Multi car insurance is a great way to save money as you can get upto 23% off the premiums. It is important to check several insurers first to compare the quotes before you purchase your policy though to make sure that you’re getting the best deal. Some companies will even give you multi car breakdown cover discounts as well, so make sure you understand what you’re getting yourself into before linking all your cars into one single insurance policy.