Getting insurance is not always easy. You want a good and affordable policy with a dependable provider after all. While reading a farmers insurance review can help you find the right provider, getting the right policy depends on many different factors. Things such as how long you have been driving for and your credit rating can significantly affect your premiums in different ways.
One factor that insurers will consider when working out the cost of car insurance is the engine size of your vehicle. This will be one of the factors which determine how high an insurance group a particular make and model of car is placed in. There are other factors too, as you will find out if you read on.
For comparisons to be made with different cars and their insurance costs, it is worthwhile contacting an insurer such as one sure insurance before committing to purchasing a vehicle.
So, what do we know about insurance groups?
What is an Insurance Group?
An insurance group is where a vehicle is ranked in terms of how high a risk it will be to insurers. Each car will be categorised into a group ranging from 1 to 50. The lower the group your vehicle ends up in as a motorist, the lower the insurance premium you will pay. It is a standardised system across all UK insurers and so it will be other factors that allow insurance premiums to vary between companies. As well as knowing your insurance group, it is good to know how insurance discounts work. These will be to your benefit, whereas insurance groups usually end up your enemy when trying to obtain the cheapest insurance quotation possible. Although do consider the cover that you are getting for your money.
How the Insurance Group Rating System Works
There are several factors that insurers will take note of when placing a vehicle into a particular insurance group. They will look at the performance, the engine size of the vehicle, safety features and its means of protection when it comes to accidents, and the varying costs of repairs in terms of its luxury and extra features.
The performance levels of vehicles, measured by their engine sizes, are known, in the case of high performance, to result in more claims and more expensive ones due to the speeds involved.
Cars with safety features will be less likely to be involved in accidents. Certain bumpers will find favour with insurance companies. Also, the invention of Autonomous Emergency Braking. These features will mean that motorists are much less likely to be involved in low-speed accidents. Approved security systems such as Thatcham protect vehicles from theft.
The cost of parts for a particular vehicle will place it into a lower or higher group. As will the length of time it is likely to take to repair when there are more complex features to be fixed. So, the more luxurious vehicles will find themselves in the higher groups. You will know the ones. They are the deluxe models where it costs more to replace your tyres. It is the same where insurers need to replace parts following an accident. Everything will be more expensive than with the standard model.
Examples of Cars in the Different Groups
To give you some ideas of the cars that will cost you the most money to insure, you may find these examples useful.
Group 1 – Fiat Panda, Nissan Micra, Vauxhall Corsa
Group 25 – Audi A4, BMW 2 Series, Citroen C4, Fiat 124 Spider, Ford Kuga, Honda Accord
Group 50 – Audi A6, BMW i8, Jaguar XE
So, as you can see, there are many insurance groups and they are all influenced by the factors mentioned above. In the UK, cars will be spread between these 50 insurance groups in terms of their risks to insure and costs to repair.
It is interesting to note that the model of the car matters far more than its manufacturer. There is a big difference between what, for instance, a BMW 2 Series will cost insurance-wise compared to a BMW i8. We have to bear this in mind. If we always steer towards a particular make when choosing a car, we should know where a particular model is grouped. There are lists to tell you, but the most accurate way is to obtain a quotation from an insurance company or broker to find out the real difference in cost and how it will hit your pocket.
So, to conclude, we have 50 different insurance groups to think about, and which one our vehicle ends up in will make a considerable difference to how much motor insurance we pay.
