A reader suggested a post on this article on the BBC website. It covers a growing issue with parents lying to insurance companies to get lower premiums for their children.
New figures suggest that 41% of parents deliberately lie when filling out policy applications.
Parents are claiming to be the main drivers on the policy, when in fact it is one of their children who is the main driver, or owner of the car.
The practice known as fronting potentially offers large savings but could lead to prosecution.
I must admit that the figure of £4,000 mentioned in the article for a 17-year old really does seem excessive for a bog-standard car. I’m not disputing the insurance company assessments, but let me explain what I mean.
You’ll know from previous posts that I don’t have a lot of time for anyone who drives a pratmobile. I think parents who let 17-year olds have them are virtually the sole reason the standard of driving on our roads today is becoming so poor. When some idiot chav wipes themselves (or anyone else) out, it is their parents who are largely to blame for never having said “no” when it mattered.
Now, over the years a lot of my pupils who’ve passed (or, in many cases, have got a car while they’ve been learning with me) have told me about the prices they have been quoted. Apart from one lad whose dad was paying £8,000 a year for his insurance (honestly – and it went up to £10,000 while he was still learning with me) for an absolute top-of-the-range Mini Cooper which could probably have made it to the moon and back if you accelerated too hard, the highest I have heard of was nearly £2,000 – but anywhere from £1,000 and upwards.
Insurance Companies
However, most of them finally managed to get cover for as little as £600! Yes, it was “fully comp” and in their own names. In many other cases, they have been added to their parents policies, and annual premiums of a couple of hundred have risen to around that same figure – but still well under £1,000 – with the added bonus of an active no claims arrangement for when they went solo with their insurance. I have a list of insurance companies who I know have provided reasonable quotes in the past (not all of those in the graphic above, although Zurich have cropped up several times as being cheap), and suggest my pupils include them when they are looking for insurance cover.
The cars we we’re talking about were Fiestas, Clios, Saxos, Puntos, Skodas, and so on. Admittedly, certain adornments can turn a lot of these into pratmobiles (wide exhausts, blue lights, tinted windows, and so on), but the actual cars involved were bog-standard.
A figure of, say, £1,000 sounds like a lot. But if you pay it monthly you’re only looking at a little over £80 a month – and anyone who is working really ought to be able to manage that for few years until the no claims brings it down, which happens quite quickly once you get into driving. Fair enough, if you’re 17, then having to wait until you’re 25 for the insurance companies to calm down and drop your premiums might seem like forever, but time passes very quickly. But after all, if they can afford £200+ a month on driving lessons, £80 a month after that to keep a car running is peanuts.
Someone being quoted £4,000 is probably not going to be driving a bog-standard car, I would suggest – certainly in many cases. So what do they expect? It will most likely be a full-on pratmobile. Or, if they are students, full-on student-like behaviour and living in areas the police are afraid of venturing into are going to affect the issue, as well. So why buy them a brand new car (typically a pratmobile) to take into areas where it is almost guaranteed to get broken into, stolen, or damaged? Believe me, one trip through a student area and you wouldn’t believe what they are driving sometimes (or how they drive them).
I know this sounds harsh, but then 41% of people lying is a huge proportion of a very large number, so what I am suggesting must be true in many cases.
The one thing the parents need to realise is that if they lie then they are simply not covered – and that includes them as well as their little darlings. And the bottom line is that if you can’t afford something then you don’t have it… that’s something we seem to have forgotten these days.
I’m sure many parents are genuinely not aware that what they are doing is illegal – a few months ago I found out one of my pupils had been out with her mum to do her first private-practice session, and I was horrified to discover her mum had said that because they were doing it at night and on an industrial estate they didn’t need to get insurance! She’s covered now, but it’s amazing how the minds of some people work.
But many of them know exactly what they are doing, and letting a chavvy 17-year old loose in a pratmobile isn’t likely to stay secret for long. After all, that’s why their premiums are so high to begin with.