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 which 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 (and/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 is 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.

It can work the other way too

If your insurance allows it, driving someone else's car instead of yours can be a way to cut mileage. Check your policy details carefully to find out if you can.

It is important to know that if you have fully comprehensive insurance cover then often, although not always, it could include what's called "driving other cars" cover. This provides you with third party cover while reducing your mileage and therefore the cost of your own policy.

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

Our latest findings of over one million quotes from January to April 2024, from MoneySupermarket, now show it is 26 days ahead of your renewal date (though any time between 20 and 27 days ahead doesn't change the price by much) to generally get the cheapest quote.

This analysis showed a policy costs an average of £2,277 a year on renewal day, but 26 days earlier the average is 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.

Whether or not you're a young driver, insurance cost depend on three things:

1. The insurer

2. Level of cover

3. Your risk level

Insurance rates are set by actuaries, whose job is to calculate risk. You can make big savings by showing an insurer you're not the typical high-risk young driver.

Each insurer's price depends on the underwriters' assessment of your particular situation and the pricing model that dictates the type of customers the insurer wants to attract. The type of car you drive also has an impact – we've full info in our Car insurance groups guide. For more, see What affects your insurance quote. 

Quick questions:

Should I try and reduce my mileage?
The less you drive, the cheaper your insurance can be, so where possible you should try to reduce your mileage. This may sound trite, but the real key is incorporating the extra insurance cost when you make long journeys, not just the cost of petrol compared to taking the bus or train (also read our Cheap trains guide).

Anecdotally, though many simply get a quote for 10,000 miles a year, MoneySavers have reported that 5,000 is the best figure to use – though we haven't tested this. 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.

If your insurance allows it, driving someone else's car instead of yours can be a way to cut mileage. Check your policy details carefully to find out if you can. It is important to know that if you have fully comprehensive insurance cover then often, although not always, it could include what's called "driving other cars" cover. This provides you with third party cover while reducing your mileage and therefore the cost of your own policy.

Can extra driving courses help?
PassPlus: This Driving Standards Agency course is aimed at helping drivers to become more confident on the road. There are six modules:

• Town driving

• All-weather driving

• Driving on rural roads

• Night driving

• Driving on dual carriage ways

• Driving on motorways

The course costs about from £150 to £250 as it varies depending on where you live and the instructor or driving school you choose. Some local councils in England and Scotland offer discounts of up to 40%, which are usually for under-25s, while in Wales it only costs £20. See Gov.uk for more details. The course takes at least six hours to complete.

Once you have the certificate some – although not many – insurers discount the price of your cover. Sadly it's become less and less recognised in the last few years, so the discounts aren't generally that high. There's a good chance you could get cheaper cover elsewhere.

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 if small changes to your job description could save you cash. Remember, NEVER lie as this will 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.

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 them 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 on your insurance form 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 in your diary to remember it. Compare comparison sites and then call your insurer to see if they can match, or even beat, the best price you found. If they 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 when to get a multicar policy, how they work and how to get one – even if you have different start dates for each car.

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

Many people find that claiming for less than £500 of damage both increases the future cost of insurance and invalidates no-claims bonuses, meaning it's not always worth making a claim.

So why pay extra for a lower excess? A few insurers will reduce premiums for a £500 excess, so try this when getting quotes. The downside of this is if you have a bigger claim you'll have to shell out more, so take this into account – as policies do usually come with a compulsory excess (which will be in addition to your voluntary excess).

If the thought of a high excess worries you, an excess protection policy is available – this allows you to claim the excess sum back. But make sure the insurer's discount exceeds the cost of this excess policy to make it worthwhile.

It is also worth noting that with this policy, you are not covered within the first 30 days of taking out the contract. You'll still need to pay the excess, and 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 59% 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+, do not 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 quotes, as to speed up searches some comparison sites make a few assumptions (see what to check).

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

Plus while you're there, it's worth playing with the policy details to see if you can finesse 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 above for more. Our New driver insurance guide will fill in the gaps.

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 20-24-year-old is over £900, paying by installments 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 if the insurer or provider charge a fee for doing so – though the fee is usually less the monthly instalments interest charge.

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 never be driven. Ensure you search for the new cheapest in advance of renewal, or you'll end up just auto-renewing to stop the fine.

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 the Bike insurance guide for more.

Some schemes do offer an accelerated no-claims bonus. MSE's 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 they'd be willing to take this into account for a no-claims bonus. Some insurers do this, including Direct Line.

See the Great 'Young drivers insurance savings' hunt 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 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 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've ongoing claims, or need to claim before a new insurer is found, the FSCS should ensure you're covered. For more see the insurance section of the Savings Safety guide.

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

That said, age is not the only consideration here – driving experience also impacts car insurance costs. For instance, if you somebody was over 25 but only recently learned how to drive, they may be considered inexperienced and face higher insurance costs.