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Saturday, October 25, 2008

Car Insurance and the Postcode Lottery

By Rachael A Miller

Many things determine how much your car insurance will be; your age, sex, claims, the type of car, and even your postcode. People are being charged higher car premiums according to the location of their house. For example, car owners who live in the North West or in London pay on average an excess of £250 for their car insurance than those who live in those areas which are thought to be safer, such as the South West.

Within the last twenty years, insurers have begun to split regions up into categories depending on their crime rates against motor vehicles, and then charging those people who live in the worst affected areas more for the premiums. This method of determining people's car insurance has created a definitive postcode lottery. It's not just the type of area you live in, for example, rural or urban, it could even come down to the street you live in. It has been found that premium prices can vary within a mile radius, because of increased crimes rates in the next town. An example of this is a small town in Wales, where a quotation for a male in his thirties hit just over £600, whereas the town less than a mile away, under the same postcode, was quoted as £100 less.

Unfortunately, there aren't many ways to avoid this lottery, but you can save yourself some pennies by doing some small things: like parking in a garage, not making visible external or internal changes that could attract vandals, and the most simple of all- choosing a car which will be cheap to insure.


You may be able to find car insurance by using the internet to compare car insurance quotes online. By browsing online, you are more likely to find cheap car insurance as the choice will not be limited to major insurers.

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