Case Study - Cheapest car insurance company for young drivers

So what are the best car insurance deals for young or new drivers at the moment? Well I've done a case study to see which company is offering the most competitive quotes among all the so-called cheap car insurance providers.

The experiment

John Smith is an 18 year old male student (date of birth 11 Jan 1990) who lives with his parent and has just got his full UK driving license. He passed his practical test first time round and to congratulate him, his parents bought him a used Nissan Micra (1 litre engine) which is about 3 years old. John decides that he will be parking his car just outside his house on the roads and thinks that the maximum mileage he will be doing in a year is 4000. Since he is a young driver, he does not have any no claims discount yet. John also knows that he cannot put his father's name as the main policy holder on the insurance because he will be the main driver and giving out false information will invalidate his insurance policy should he be involved in an accident. Therefore, as a brave little soldier, he starts shopping around for a cheap car insurance quote for his Nissan Micra. Here are the quotes he received:

Direct Line : £2124.15
Churchill : £2352.00
Liverpool Victoria : £2640.18
MoreThan : £3379.65
Bell : £3426.82
Norwich Union : £4448.00

Well the cheapest quote he received was from Direct Line Car Insurance. Still a lot of money, isn't it? Unless you drive without insurance (which is not recommended at all!), you will not be getting any cheaper quotes because young drivers are more prone to accidents and statistics says it all. Insurers regard you, the new driver on the road, as a high risk driver and will quote high premiums to insure you. However in the case of Direct Line, after 1 year driving without any claims, the renewal quote for your car insurance will be £1193.85, a massive saving of £930.30 within a year! I suppose the first year is the toughest and it eventually becomes cheap as you prove you are a safe driver which insurers like.

And by the way, I've tried sites like Confused which are supposed to get you the best quotes on the market and guess what, the cheapest car insurance quote they could retrieve was about £3300 from a company called Bull's Eye. The list of insurance companies they searched for is shown below:

• AA, Admiral, AIG Direct, Alliance & Leicester, Auto Direct
• Barclays, Budget, Bullseye
• Dial Direct, Diamond, Direct Choice
• Easy Money, E-Car, Elephant, Esure, Endsleigh
• Flexibell
• Halifax, Hastings Direct, Hero
• Insure It All, Insure&Go, Insure.co.uk, Its4me
• Kwikfit
• Ladybird, Lancaster Classic, Lancaster Full Quote, Localbroker
• Marks & Spencer, Masterquote, More Than
• Norwich Union
• People’s Choice, Post Office
• Quinn Direct, Quote a Car
• RAC
• Simplecover, Saga, Sainsburys, Screentrade, Sheilas Wheels, Swift Cover, Swinton
• Yes Insurance
• Zurich

Even though sites like Confused or GoCompare search many insurance companies at once, they DO NOT search all companies! So you could be missing on a huge saving if you don't search for a more competitive quote elsewhere. As you can see from the above panel of insurers, Direct Line is not listed.

Therefore spare yourself 2 minutes and try getting a quote from Direct Line Car Insurance and let me know how much you're being quoted afterwards.

Remember this is independent advice that I am giving away and if you find cheaper quote with another company, I will update the information here so that other young drivers can benefit as well.