Today our eldest daughter passed her driving test. She's 31 years old and didn't have to learn before as since leaving school she went to University then got a job in London so has relied on public transport. Anyway, circumstances have changed and she's moved back to live with us at home in the west country while she sets up her own business.

 

After passing her test this morning she rang her insurance company to inform them, and was told the premium would increase by £115. I was expecting it to go down as she's now a qualified driver, I assumed a learner driver would be a higher risk, but apparently not. The insurance is with Admiral, fully comp, on a 2002 Honda Civic 1.6 SE petrol.

 

We though it best if she took out insurance in her own name as soon as she got her own car so she could start to build up a no claims discount asap. My wife is also a named driver on the policy. Approximately £1000/year fully comp.

 

Is it normal for newly qualified drivers insurance to go up like this ?.

Whilst she was a learner she had to be accompanied, now she has been let loose on her own. Therefore she has become a greater risk and the therefore the premium increases.

I can see why.

Your daughter was always fully accompanied/supervised while learning, now your daughter will be by herself and having to make her own decisions, so the risk is increased, dramatically.

You don't really start learning to drive until you're out there by yourself with noone else to rely on. Hence the risk goes up.

I was a named driver on my daughter's insurance until she was in her mid-thirties - it always reduced the premium, despite us living 12 miles apart.  In fact the same 'trick' also reduced my other daughter's insurance premium and she lives 150 miles away from me.

 

My wife and I are also a named driver on each other's insurance but I doubt that it makes much difference as we both pay under £150 .

Thanks for everyone's replies. Looks like it might be worth adding myself to the policy to see if it makes it cheaper for her.

HI, bit late to the party on this but yes it is usual for the premium to go up when a driver passes their test and is unleashed on the unsuspecting public

 

You're doing the right thing by encouraging her to build up NCB in her own right ASAP and adding you might not make as much difference as adding your wife (which you've also done).

 

best,

Nick

When I was learning to drive at 17 I had a little Peugeot ad it cost me £1200 to insure it as a provisional. Phoned them up when I passed my test, that'll be another £8000 thank you. You know where you can stick that! Cheapest quote we could find was with a black box (not recommended!) and was £4300.

SWMBO, finally after many years persuading her to, pulled her finger out, did some lessons and passed her test a couple of weeks ago 

 

Her premium nigh on doubled when I switched it over    Didn't want to put a black box on so will just suffer it, but they've got you by the short a curlies 

Yep, just thank god that this isn't 2011 when the insurance prices for new drivers were high as the heavens, from own experience, I was ripped a new anus to fork out the cash for insurance

Congrats to the daughter mate,

 

Admiral etc aren't always the best places to try, there are better cheaper companies out there, you could try A-Plan, Coversure and play each off against each other, best to look at those offering commercial insurance as they tend to do normal insurance but at better rates.

Just sharing my experience,

It was £1200+ to insure the gf on anything, she was 23 with zero no claims but did pass her test at 17 which may have had an impact. I went through every car I could think of from 0.6 ltr up and couldn't get a good price on anything until I moved to cars aged 25 years plus.

Managed to get a 1985 1.6ltr mk 1 golf cabriolet, bought for 800 and insured for 150. A 1986 would have cost 2k to insure at the time but over the 25 year threshold and it plummeted. Not for all cars though, the Nissan sunny wasn't any cheaper to insure...

I don't understand why but she doesn't have a classic car policy so still earns no claims bonus so has three years no claims now.

I just did a dummy check on confused.com and basically the 1985 golf is 224 to insure as long as you have held a licence for two years and have no points so guess it's not of much use now but after two years holding a licence with or without no claims it could be worth a look.

Hi,

When your policy is up for renewal please feel free to give us a try for insurance. I'd be only too pleased to try and help.

Regards,

Dan. 

step daughter was the same 600 as a learner from Tesco passed test and informed them, it then shot up to 1200, I looked around a few sites and it seemed high on most of them, so we decided to leave it a week and try again, went on to Tesco and stuck in the details for her and car and they gave us a price of 877, as we were just testing the waters we stuck in a start date for start of may.. after a few days we decided that it was going to be cheaper to cancel her policy and start a new one at the lower price, so I jumped back on to Tesco retrieved the quote still saying 877 a year, double checked all the details.. wife called them to cancel the policy in place and see if they could set up the new policy at same time, so woman kindly cancelled it and tried to put on new quote but said she couldn't cause of the start date, so I changed the start date online and hit update.... to our amazement the price dropped to 625 a year.. Tesco explained that certain times of the month can effect the price but from the start of the month it went from 1200 to 877 ten days later and two days later went to 625.. and they say they not ripping us off..