Get Cheap Car Insurance in Your Area with These Tips

Picture: Illustration car insurance in your area

No insured person is happy to overpay their insurance premium. No one likes to find that another insurer charges up to 50% less for the same guarantees and options.

If the car insurance obligation makes it possible to effectively protect victims of traffic accidents, nothing obliges motorists to overpay their contract for the benefit of insurance companies!

Less-Chere has therefore chosen to reveal the different techniques and procedures to reduce the amount of your car insurance contribution.

Read Also: 6 Month Car Insurance

Compare rates: a necessary step before subscribing

What are the cheapest types of insurers on the market?

Top 10 cheapest car insurers

  • How do I know if my car insurance is cheaper than others? (average car insurance rates)
  • Which formula to choose for your contract?
  • Important elements that change the price of insurance
  • Compare rates: a necessary step before subscribing

To find a car insurance contract adapted to your needs and as cheap as possible, it is obviously necessary to make several quotes from insurance companies or brokers.

For this, it is advisable to go through comparators like Mon Auto Assure whose job is precisely to obtain quotes simultaneously from several insurers.

There are 5 main insurance comparators in France, and each one interviews on average between 20 and 30 companies distributing car insurance contracts: mainly brokers, but also some insurance companies and mutuals.

We offer you to make a comparative quote with two of the most important comparators on the market:

To complete this first job of finding low rates, it is advisable to also make a quote directly from insurers specializing in car insurance. Depending on your driver profile and your type of vehicle, each insurer may provide a different answer in terms of guarantees or rates.

Another possibility: you can benefit from the promotional offers regularly offered by certain insurance companies.

Some insurers have historically charged lower rates than their competitors. This price difference is explained by the type of structure and the mode of operation of these insurers.

If you are looking for the cheapest possible price, we therefore advise you first of all to obtain quotes from these insurers known for their competitive rates. But what are they?

What are the cheapest types of insurers on the market?

Three types of car insurers offer lower rates than the average insurer in France: direct insurers, mutual insurance companies and bancassurers. Obviously, depending on the profiles, some fully digitalized brokerage companies (insurtech) can also offer attractive prices.

get-cheap-car-insurance-in-your-area-with-these-tips

Direct insurers

A “direct insurer” is a company or mutual insurance company distributing its products without any intermediary, that is to say without a physical sales network (points of sale, general agents or brokers).

Some brokers also use this name but their status as an intermediary (therefore with an additional commission) can prevent them from having really low rates.

Direct insurers have the advantage of not having to bear the costs inherent in this physical network: rental, renovation and maintenance of professional premises, remuneration of intermediaries, etc.

All sales consultants are gathered on common platforms and the maximum is done so that relations with policyholders take place online.

Thanks to this mode of operation, direct insurers can practice a more "low-cost" pricing policy than their traditional competitors, especially with new, discounted customers.

Mutual insurance companies

Mutual insurance companies also manage to offer more attractive rates than traditional companies. How do they do it?

According to the definition of the International Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (AISAM): "A mutual insurance company is an insurance company that is the collective property of its members and that acts in the best interest of its members.

That is to say that insured clients of a mutual insurance company are also members and can act on company policy. In addition, a mutual insurance company does not seek immediate profit since it does not have to pay dividends to shareholders (as many companies have to do).

It can therefore maximize its efforts on the search for "sustainable profitability and loyalty of members" by limiting the increase in its rates as much as possible.

Unfortunately for young drivers and ill-informed drivers, mutual insurance companies mainly address their business strategy to experienced and well-informed drivers. They offer particularly attractive promotions to the latter: bonuses up to 65%, lifetime bonuses.

Bancassurers

Top 10 cheapest car insurers (all types combined)

To establish a ranking of companies offering the most competitive car insurance contracts, we have compiled the data provided by several reference entities in the insurance and automotive sectors in France: Index Insurance (2021 price barometer),

  • Savings Files (July 2021 auto guide, n° 270), What to Choose (2019 auto insurance study), Auto Plus (analysis of 20 contracts, October 2021, n° 1730) and Opinion Assurances (2022 ranking)

  • We have also made several online quotes on the websites of dozens of French insurers, with different driver profiles (bonuses of 50%, 60%, 64% and 85%)
  • We are therefore able to offer you a ranking of the cheapest insurers on the market for "good drivers" profiles (CRM from 0.85).

Obviously, this ranking is not completely representative of the market. The price of an insurance contract depends on many factors (vehicle and driver's history in particular) and an insurer may offer a low rate for a certain insured profile and a high rate for another.

How do I know if my insurance is cheaper than others?

Here are some average annual rates for car insurance contracts. These average rates were obtained by comparing the rates charged by about twenty insurance companies in France on five specific profiles.

By comparing the amount of your annual contribution with these rates, you can already see if it is above or below the average rate for other car insurance contracts.

Which formulas to choose for your contract?

The choice of the formula will obviously depend on the amount of the contribution of your insurance contract.

But choosing a formula that is not very protective can be a bad calculation if you own a recent vehicle and / or with a certain value at the Argus. Our ranking of the best car insurers in France can help you see clearly: find it here.

Simple third party

The easiest way to get a really low car insurance rate is to only take out a third-party formula (simple third-party with only civil liability).

This guarantee is the only mandatory one (article L211-1 of the Insurance Code) to be taken out as a driver of a land-based motor vehicle (car, motorcycle, scooter ...). On the other hand, with simple third-party, you are only protected from damage that you can cause to others with your car.

Enhanced/ Intermediate Third Party

If you have the financial opportunity and if your car is relatively new (less than 7 years old), we advise you to take out at least a more complete package, including assistance, driver protection, ice breakage, theft and natural disasters guarantee.

This will allow you to protect your budget, especially in the event of theft or damage related to a natural disaster. The driver's protection will allow you to obtain compensation if you are injured in a responsible accident.

All risks

If you want to guarantee compensation in all cases, even when you are responsible for an accident, you will have to choose an All-risk formula.

This formula contains the all-accident Damage guarantee which allows you to be compensated for the repair / replacement costs of your vehicle even when you are declared responsible (totally or partially) for a loss.

And this happens more often than we think: an accident in a parking lot due to lack of visibility, the door left open to store luggage or groceries, forgetting to turn right.

But be careful, this guarantee does not prevent you from paying a deductible when paying compensation if you are declared responsible for the loss (partially or completely, see below ↓).

Important elements that change the price of your insurance

The rate provided by an auto insurer on an insurance quote or proposal does not quite correspond to what you will actually pay during your life as an insured.

Indeed, it can increase or decrease depending on the events that you will declare to your insurance. Here are the elements that can change the price that your car insurance will cost you over time.

get-cheap-car-insurance-in-your-area-with-these-tips

Amount of deductibles in the event of a claim

An element to check before subscribing because many insurers offer low rates but high deductible amounts!

In insurance, the deductible is the financial part remaining at the expense of the insured when compensating for a loss. This amount is deducted from the amount of compensation that is paid after a claim:

If you are declared responsible for a loss, this deductible will be systematically deducted from your compensation unless you have subscribed to a Deductible Redemption option.

If you are not declared responsible, the deductible will not be deducted if there is an identified third party and both insurers are signatories to the IRSA agreement.

The amount of a deductible can be high and vary greatly from one insurer to another: from € 200 to € 800 per claim! Note that the deductible can be absolute (fixed and constant sum) or proportional (percentage of the amount of the claim).

Miscellaneous costs: subscription, amendment or termination

In addition to the annual contribution to be paid to your insurer, the latter may impose several fees to carry out operations related to your insurance contract:

  • Subscription / application fees: even if cases are rare, some insurers still ask for application fees when registering a new insured's subscription. In the amount of a few tens of euros, these costs are to be checked before subscribing on the proposal submitted by your insurer.

  • Endorsement fees: Sometimes, fees are applied when you make an endorsement on your insurance contract (change of address, addition or deletion of an option ...). All car insurers are far from applying such fees, but some moderate their competitive base rate in this way.

  • Fees for splitting the payment of the contribution: they are also to be checked before subscription. Even if this tends to disappear, several insurers do not hesitate to increase the amount of the annual contribution if you opt for a monthly / quarterly payment of your contribution.

  • The opposite is also true: monthly payment insurers increase their rates if you choose the annual payment.
  • Evolution of the bonus-disadvantages and advantages for good drivers

  • Mandatory since 1976, the bonus-malus system in car insurance makes it possible to financially reward good drivers and, conversely, to punish drivers responsible for damage claims. The principle is simple:

  • A 5% reduction is applied to the amount of the annual contribution each year without responsible claims, until a maximum reduction of 50% is reached.

  • For a professional vehicle "Touring or All trips", the discount is equal to 7%.

  • A 25% mark-up is applied for each fully responsible claim until a maximum mark-up of 250% is reached.

  • For a professional vehicle "Touring or All trips", the surcharge is equal to 20%.

  • For a partially responsible claim, the increase is only 12.5%.

  • The increases can be accumulated if there are several responsible claims during the same year.

In addition to the bonus, several insurers offer additional discounts for good and loyal drivers. Thus, some offer to extend the maximum discount up to 65% while others guarantee the bonus "for life" (well, as long as you stay with the same insurer ...).

A reduction of up to 25% of the contribution amount can also be proposed.

Young driver surcharge: up to 100% increase

The young driver surcharge is a real possibility offered by law (article 2 of the annex to article A. 121-1) to an insurer to add a surcharge to the amount of the contribution of a novice driver (less than 3 years of insurance).

This surcharge can represent up to 100% of the initial premium (50% for an insured who has done the accompanied driving)!

This surcharge is reduced by half with each new year of insurance until it disappears completely after the third year.

Insurers are not obliged to apply this surcharge. It is therefore particularly advisable to obtain quotes from several insurance companies in order to check their existence (also do not hesitate to ask your insurance advisor). (*)

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