First insurance for my daughter

[Silverage]

My daughter was due to take her driving test this morning, but it's just been postponed (thanks beast from the east) as the 1 cm of snow we have here appears to be too much for the examiner.

Anyway, we lined up a car for her a couple of weeks ago and we had arranged to collect it later today. The insurance, based upon her having a full licence and with me as an additional driver is coming in at what I thought was a reasonable £950 (1.2 Fiat 500).

I'd still like to collect the car today, but her not having taken her driving test yet muddies the insurance waters a bit. Oddly, it's far cheaper to insure it for her with a provisional licence (just over £300), but that's with a different company to that offering the best full licence quote. My question is, can we insure it for her today with the £300 company and then assuming she passes her re-arranged test in 10 days time, cancel that insurance and switch to the £950 company, or do they frown on that kind of thing?

[MRichards99]

That's the same sort of thing I did when I was learning to drive in my car (I'm 18 now). Getting a year's cover whilst learning is a much better deal than this 'temporary learner insurance' as you get quite a bit of your money back when you cancel once you've passed. Just check cancelling fees and how much money you'll get back from the £300 company, I got my learner insurance through Lloyd's Bank, they refunded the amount of insurance that you didn't use, which was good hope she gets on ok! If you're just going to drive it before she passes (or maybe she'll practice in the 500, I'm not too sure on your situation), you could use somewhere like tempcover.com - you can get insurance for a day or so while you drive the car back. But if your daughter wants to practice in the car then the £300 company sounds the best!

Edited by MRichards99 on Tuesday 27th February 10:55

[Silverage]

Thanks for that. So apart from perhaps getting stung for a cancellation fee you don’t think there would be a problem with cancelling the learner insurance after a couple of weeks?

[Silverage]

Actually, I just called the insurance company to ask about cancellation fees and they want £200, so we'll be kicking that one into touch I think.

[MRichards99]

There shouldn't be, I cancelled mine after a couple of months. I would say high cancellation fees (like you've spotted) would be the only thing you could face issues with, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with cancelling a policy after a couple of weeks - once your daughter has passed, she'll no longer be valid on that policy so there's a valid reason why you'd be cancelling.

[Silverage]

Makes sense I suppose. They did offer a temporary one-month policy for £105, so that would obviously be cheaper than paying the £200 cancellation fee.

[MRichards99]

I guess that would be good ok providing your daughter passes her test (you never know until you have that certificate in your hand!) within that month (assuming she'll be driving the car as a learner). I imagine there are other companies willing to do a year's learner insurance - confused.com did me well.

[rampageturke]

And what if she failed?

insurance for provisional license holders is understandably lower, it's got a bunch of restrictions on it.

[ayman82]

If you cancel within the first 14 days, there should just be an admin fee, normally of around £25. It's cheaper for a driver with a provisional because the learning driver will always have a 'responsible' adult with them, who has had their licence for over 3 years and is over 21.

[Silverage]

That’s what I’m going to do I think. I’ve found a company that only charges £25 if you cancel in the first two weeks of cover (there are plenty that charge more) so I’ll go for that then cancel when she (hopefully) passes next week and take out the policy for the full licence.

I’m going to use the same company so I don’t feel like I’m just using one of the others for a week of cover with no intention of staying with them.