The question we hear most often is “which is the cheapest insurer”. It has no answer, and the reason it has none is the most useful thing this site knows.
Two ways to price
Every company starts from a base premium and multiplies it by factors: for age, for years licensed, for the area, for the record. It is the factors that differ from company to company, and they differ not only in size but in how steeply they move.
A company that sells online, with no agent to negotiate with the customer, prices risk more harshly: the twenty-two-year-old pays far more than the market average, the fifty-year-old with a clean record far less. A traditional company with a thousand branches flattens the curve, because a flat curve sells more easily across a desk.
What it means in practice
In our data, for a driver aged 42 with a clean record, the first company in the ranking is an online insurer. For a driver aged 22 with a two-year licence and a 1,600 cc car in Athens, the same company comes last, and first place goes to one of the most traditional names in the business.
That is not an anomaly. It is the market working: every company has chosen which customer it wants, and says so with its price.
What to do with this
- Do not ask your friend. The company that suited them priced them.
- Do not rely on an advert with “from”. The “from” is the fifty-year-old with the clean record in a provincial town. If that is not you, the number is not about you.
- Enter your own details and look at the order. The order of the ranking for your own details is the only information that matters, and it is different from the order for anyone else.