How to request a car insurance quote

Whether you are requesting quotes for your car insurance through a price comparison site, a broker, or directly from an insurer you will be asked to answer several pertinent questions in order to receive a price.

Regardless of where you want to request a quote from, make sure you have the following information to hand before you apply to help the process flow smoothly:

About you as the policyholder

You will need complete details of your driving licence. This includes the type of licence you hold, how long you have had it for, and any points that may currently be on it (this information will be needed for all named drivers of the vehicle). You will also need to have a complete car insurance history, including a full record of all claims you have made, how much no-claims discount you receive, and which company can verify it. You will also need a full postcode and address for the property where you currently live.

About the car you drive

Questions regarding your car will normally include: The make and model, the registration number (knowing this will often automatically complete some online forms for you), The value, a rough idea of how many miles it is likely to do a year, its purpose (work vehicle, commuting, domestic or a mix of the three), and where the vehicle is to be kept overnight.

Do not be tempted to bend the truth or lie when it comes to your car insurance, as if you need to make a claim and your insurer finds that not all the information you have given is correct, your policy could be considered void.

Legal requirements for car insurance

Legally, any vehicle over three years old must pass an MOT test and have a certificate verifying this. Without an MOT and car insurance certificate you cannot tax a vehicle, and driving a car without having all three of these documents is illegal - the Road Traffic Act says that you must be insured against injury or damage caused by yourself when in charge of a vehicle.

You are also obliged to keep your insurer informed with regards to any changes to your policy; these include modifications to the vehicle and driving offences committed. This is called “Utmost good faith”, and it is one of the terms your cover is held under. What this means is that you are required to disclose any information which may be deemed important by your insurance provider without prompt, and also means that the insurer assumes all information in your policy to be correct and true. If this is not true you risk any claims you make being affected or even refused.

What is fronting?

One particularly common insurance offense is what is known as “fronting”: This is where a parent adds a child to a policy as a named driver, but the child then becomes the main driver (Or indeed, if they are the registered keeper and owner).

Whilst this makes car insurance cheaper for young drivers, if the insurance company discovers this in the process of a claim being made, they will often reject the claim as the premium they quoted (and thus the risk they assessed) was not based on correct information.