Young driver insurance

Bizarrely, adding a second named driver to your policy can cut your costs. We tried adding a 40-year-old family member as an 'occasional' user (not a main driver) to an 18-year-old's policy, and this cut the cost by around £1,000. These seven tips show how you can get cheaper car insurance...

• Car insurance is all about risk. That's why it can work. If you're a high-risk driver and you add someone who is a much lower risk as a 2nd (or 3rd) driver, they can bring down the average risk and you may get a cheaper policy.

• This isn't just for young drivers. While it works well for young drivers as they are automatically seen as a high risk, it can work for anyone – but of course it's especially powerful for those with costlier insurance.

• The better the driving history and lower the second driver's risk, the more impact it should have. That said, anyone who's a lower risk can help. By law, insurers can't discriminate over gender, but age, driving experience and history can make a difference.

• This is about trial and error, not logic. Your mum may increase the cost, your brother may cut it, or vice versa. It's just a question of trying different quotes and seeing what happens.

• Different insurers respond in different ways. One may cut your costs by adding your uncle, another may increase it. Therefore a quick way to check is by varying quotes on comparison sites – it's easy to do, see our top comparison sites list below.

• The second driver should be someone who would reasonably drive your car. So don't add Lewis Hamilton, unless you happen to be his brother (and even then racing drivers are likely a very high risk so I wouldn't bother) – but your mum, son, best mate or gran should be OK – as long as they would drive the car.

• Never add someone as main driver if they're not. This is known in the industry as 'fronting' and is fraud. If you do it and are caught, you can face a criminal conviction and your insurance will likely be invalid.

We first looked at this back in 2018, when we revealed 21 days ahead of your renewal date was the cheapest time to get car insurance quotes.

Our latest findings, from looking at over one million quotes given via MoneySupermarket between January and April 2024, show it is now 26 days ahead of your renewal date. Though any time between 20 and 27 days ahead doesn't change the price by much.

This analysis showed a policy cost an average of £2,277 a year on renewal day, but 26 days earlier the average was just £906 a year – a MASSIVE £1,371 difference.

In general, the closer to your renewal date you get quotes, the more of a risk you're deemed to be (we've heard that it can show insurers you're a bit disorganised). Yet, getting quotes too early, for example, 28+ days out, can also push the average price up – likely as fewer insurers will provide quotes that far out.

So, if you're already within the 20 to 27-day period, get quotes now as the price tends to steadily increase closer to the start date of the policy. If you're closer to your renewal date, every day helps, so get quotes ASAP.

We've full info on how to bag the cheapest car insurance policy in this guide – see our comparison sites order below.

There are many factors that can affect the cost of your car insurance. One of the biggest is your 'risk level', so it's key that you try to show insurers that you're willing to take steps to reduce your level of risk.

Ways you can do this include limiting the amount you drive, doing an advanced driving course, to really polish your skills, and being aware that the type of car you drive also has an impact – we've full info on how your vehicle can affect your premium in our Car insurance groups guide.

And for more on the factors that influence how much you'll pay, see our full What affects your insurance quote guide. 

Quick questions

Should I try to reduce my mileage?

The less you drive, the cheaper your insurance can be, so where possible you should try to reduce your mileage.

When you get quotes, insurers will want to know the number of miles you expect to do in a year. And while this can be hard to work out when you're new to driving, it's worth doing the sums, so you can give a more accurate estimate and keep your costs down, rather than just going for an average figure of 10,000 to 12,000 miles a year.

Work out how far you may drive in a week, such as your journeys to work and/or to college or uni, and how far you may drive for pleasure at the weekends. Google Maps or any other mapping software can help here.

Multiply that number by 52 to give an annual figure. But then also think about other leisure activities that you might use your car for across the year, such as going on trips with friends or to music festivals, and also factor in any long journeys you know you'll make on a regular basis. Total these journeys up and add them to your original number, then add a 10% buffer and round the figure up to the nearest 1,000. This will give you a much clearer idea of your annual mileage than just blindly picking a figure based on averages.

Once you've been driving for longer than a year you'll more easily be able to see the mileage you're doing, and this will also be recorded on your vehicle's annual MOT check.

If you drive your vehicle on business, always declare this rather than just including the business miles as personal, or the policy may be void.

Can extra driving courses help?

Learning to be a better driver can make you safer on the roads and potentially cut your car insurance costs too.

Some insurers reduce the price of your policy if you can prove that you've done an advanced driving course. For example, the charity IAM RoadSmart offers a variety of courses (at a cost), including one specifically for younger drivers.

Another example is the Driving Standards Agency course Pass Plus, which aims to help motorists become more confident on the road. Modules include driving in built-up areas, on motorways, and at night.

The course costs about £150 to £250 depending on where you live and the instructor or driving school you choose. Some councils in England and Scotland offer discounts of up to 40%, which are usually for under-25s, while in Wales it only costs £20. You can do Pass Plus in Northern Ireland, but it's not discounted. See the Gov.uk website for more details.

Once you have the Pass Plus certificate some – although not many – insurers discount the price of your cover. Unfortunately it's become less and less recognised in the last few years, so the discounts aren't generally that high.

Another quick win is tweaking your job description (legitimately of course). An illustrator is often cheaper than an artist, an editor than a journalist or a PA than a secretary.

Have a play with our Car Insurance Job Picker tool and see whether small changes to your job description could save you cash. Remember, NEVER lie as this would be considered fraudulent. A good way to look at it is "would a reasonable person consider this a reasonable description of what I do for a living?" If not, best to err on the side of caution. 

If it worked for you, share your success stories with our forum users.

Quick question

What should I put if I'm unemployed?

If you don't have a job, you face a potential fivefold jump in insurance costs by declaring you're unemployed. The same hikes don't apply to homemakers (house wives/house husbands). If that's you, say so to avoid a hike in costs.

However, only enter homemaker if you're genuinely not seeking work or receiving benefits which require you to seek work. Otherwise, it's fraud.

If you haven't got 'normal' circumstances, for example, you've made a claim in the past few years, have a modified car or expect to drive 100,000s of miles a year, tell your insurer. If you don't and then try to claim, even for an unrelated issue, your policy may be invalid.

You also need to tell your insurer about any changes as this reduces potential problems in the event of a claim, even if it's just your address. Trying to get insurance after you've had a policy cancelled is very difficult, very expensive and will follow you for the rest of your life.

A change in circumstances includes moving jobs, as insurers believe this can affect your risk. Scandalously, the unemployed often (though not always) pay higher rates for their cover – so tell your provider if you're out of work.

If you have a new car, you'll need to tell the insurer right away. See our changing car insurance guide for what you need to know about transferring your insurance.

With insurance, remember – the golden rule is:

Tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

If you've read these tips and thought, "it's easy to lie about this", then of course, you're right. Yet lying to your policy provider is fraud. It can lead to your insurance being invalidated and, in the worst case, a criminal prosecution for driving without insurance.

Nothing better illustrates car insurers preying on loyal customers than Sarah Cooper's tweet. "My car insurance renewal is £1,200. New policy with same company is £690. How do they justify this?" They don't. They just do it.

Insurers charge increasing amounts each year, knowing inertia will stop policyholders switching. If your renewal is coming up, jot it on your calendar or in your diary to remember it. Compare comparison sites and then call your insurer to see whether it can match, or even beat, the best price you found. If it can, you're quids in.

If you have more than one car in your immediate family or household, this could be for you. For some, discounts for adding multiple cars could save £100s, or even £1,000s in some cases, but for others it could actually be more expensive. 

To help, our dedicated Multicar insurance guide explains how multicar policies work, plus when to get and how to get one – even if you have different policy start dates for each car.

It's worth thinking about going for a policy with a higher excess – which is the amount you have to pay towards any claim you might make. A higher excess will result in lower premiums, but make sure you can afford it in the event you need to claim.

Try different amounts of voluntary excess when getting quotes, to see how it affects what you'll pay. Bear in mind too that policies do usually come with a compulsory excess (in addition to the voluntary excess), and you have to pay both when claiming.

Of course, the downside of a higher excess is that you may have to shell out more, if you claim, so take this into account.

If the thought of a high excess worries you, an excess protection policy is available, as an add-on on top of your normal car insurance policy. This allows you to claim the excess sum back. But make sure the insurer's discount is bigger than the cost of this excess policy to make it worthwhile.

It's also worth noting that with this policy, you're not covered within the first 14 days of taking it out. And you'll still need to pay the excess, then wait for reimbursement – no matter who is at fault.

We analyse the prices of a large range of insurance quotes given by Compare The Market, Confused.com and MoneySupermarket. We then take the following steps:

1. Check how many times each comparison site returned the cheapest or within £5 of the cheapest quote.

2. The comparison site giving the greatest number of cheapest quotes, or within £5 of the cheapest, is ranked first.

3. We then analyse the comparison site ranked first with each of the two remaining comparison sites. The combination of the two that returns the greatest number of cheapest quotes will be ranked as first and second to try, to increase your chances of a cheap quote at speed.

Here are the latest scores

This month's results show that Confused.com gives the cheapest quote 54% of the time – the most out of the three comparison sites. Get a quote from Confused.com and Compare The Market and you'll increase your chances of getting a cheaper quote to 84%.

To boost your chances of getting a cheap quote even further, get a quote from Confused.com, Compare The Market and MoneySupermarket.

Follow this order if you're under 25. However, if you're aged 25+, don't have more than three penalty points on your licence, are claim/accident-free, and it's not a company car, see our Cheap car insurance guide.

Click through to the insurance firm's own website to double-check the quote, as to speed up searches some comparison sites make a few assumptions (see what to check).

Check whether it's suitable. If you want a free hire car while yours is being fixed, is that included?

Plus while you're there, it's worth playing with the policy details to see whether you can trim the price down. Look at the excess, and whether adding drivers cuts the cost.

Once you've signed up for a black box insurance policy, you'll need to arrange a date for it to be fitted to your car (unless it's an app-based policy).

You don't typically have to pay for the box upfront but the price of it will be incorporated within the overall insurance cost. Some insurers will impose a fee if you miss a fitting appointment, need to move the box to another car or want it removed.

And if you start tampering with it – thinking you can move it or trick it, and it breaks, expect a hefty bill for a replacement box.

Unfortunately there are several reasons for this. Young drivers are less experienced than older road users, bringing them into a higher risk category with insurers. Less-experienced drivers are more likely to have more accidents, and therefore put in more claims to their insurers – so insurance companies make their policies more expensive to compensate.

Yet by driving carefully you can help offset this and lower the price – see our young driver insurance need-to-knows above for more.

Beware 'pay monthly' options – usually the insurer just loans you the annual cost and then charges interest on top at hideous rates. As the average cost for a 20 to 24-year-old is over £900, paying by instalments can easily add in excess of another £200 to your premium.

So either pay in full, or if you can't afford it, try to borrow the money elsewhere more cheaply (ideally on a 0% interest-free credit card, ensuring your repayments are big enough to clear it within a year).

If paying by credit card, check whether the provider charges a fee for doing so – though the fee is usually less than you'd be charged extra to pay monthly.

Yes – cars must be insured unless declared off-road. The Continuous Insurance Enforcement scheme means all cars must be insured – even if no one drives them. The aim's to crack down on two million uninsured drivers by matching up the database of cars and insured drivers.

The only way out is to apply for a Sorn (Statutory Off Road Notification) declaring your car will not be driven during the time that the Sorn is applied.

Generally, insurance is a lot cheaper for a moped or motorbike than for a car. Plus, some insurers may put any no-claims bonus from bike insurance on your car insurance too if you later get your car insured with them. Yet do take safety into account as a new motorist – if you're in an accident, you're better-protected if you're in a car. See our Cheap motorbike insurance guide for more.

Some schemes do offer an accelerated no-claims bonus. MSE Forumites have suggested if you've previously been insured as an additional driver on, for example, your parents' policy, call your insurer and ask if it'd be willing to take this into account for a no-claims bonus. Some insurers do this, including Direct Line.

See the Young drivers' insurance savings forum discussion for more tips and tricks.

If you have an accident, and damage someone else's car or property, but decide to cover the costs yourself, then strictly speaking, you should still tell your insurer about it.

Many don't, thinking it will lead to higher premiums, yet a problem may arise if you have a second accident and it is found to be related to work undertaken for the first. If this happens it would most likely result in the claim not being paid, rather than the insurance being cancelled or you being reported for fraud. But it could still end up costing you £1,000s.

Insurance firms regulated in the UK are covered by the same Government-backed Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) as banks, so if they go into default, you're protected.

A number of insurers – particularly those who offer telematics pay-when-you-drive cover – are based in Gibraltar. However, a special Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) rule says these policies have the same protection as those from UK-based insurers. Specifically: "The UK requires all EEA [European] insurers... to participate in the FSCS in the same way as all insurers that are directly authorised by the FCA."

In the unlikely event a regulated insurer goes bust, the FSCS will try to find another provider to take over or issue a substitute policy. However, if you have an ongoing claim, or need to claim before a new insurer is found, the FSCS should ensure you're covered.

Generally speaking, those aged 25 and older are no longer deemed to be a young driver.

That said, age is not the only consideration here – driving experience also affects car insurance costs. For instance, if somebody was over 25 but only recently learned how to drive, they may be considered inexperienced and face higher insurance costs. For help on lowering car insurance costs as a new driver, see our dedicated guide.