What is Temporary Car Insurance and Why Should I Get It?
Because of the way the typical student lives - toing and froing between the family home and their student digs - insurance companies offer very handy temporary car insurance, and happily, it caters incredibly well to the nature of the undergraduate’s rather transient lifestyle.If a student needs usually drives the family car when they return home, then obviously, they need the appropriate insurance cover. While regular insurance policies require a year’s contract, car insurance for young drivers, or ‘temporary car insurance’ as it is officially known, allows the young policyholder to come and go freely, and means that they’re not tied down to a year-long contract, losing money that neither they nor their parents can afford.
Quite simply, if you’re a named driver on the main driver’s insurance policy, they run the risk of losing their incredibly precious no claims discount (NCD) if the named driver has an accident under what is essentially their name and their policy… So temporary car insurance has the added bonus of eliminating that risk to the main driver’s NCD, and the temporary policyholder will be responsible in full for their actions.
Another reason you might want to get yourself temporary insurance cover is that you can start to build up your own no claims discount. While you’re a named driver on another driver’s policy, you will, in terms of insurance, not exist. Your own NCD is a very valuable thing to have stored up, because if, when it comes to your graduation, you get your dream job and need to buy a car to get there and back every day, your insurance will be considerably lower if you have your NCD intact when you do.
Although a lot of car insurance companies see younger drivers as a risk and thus either charge large premiums just don’t insure them, there are some insurance companies who are willing to help students and young, responsible drivers get from A to B.
The best thing to do is to start shopping around. And when you’ve done that, shop around some more. Price comparison websites like moneysupermarket.com are brilliant for this. You just enter your details once, and their database does all the work for you. They’ve got countless car insurance companies stored in their price comparison tool, so in a matter of seconds, they’ll get far more quotes than you would be able to yourself before completely losing the will to live - each one can take between five and ten minutes to do, so it really is a massive timesaver.
