Insurance providers that specialise in student car insurance?

Yes, Endsleigh Insurance Services are one provider that specializes in student car insurance, they dub themselves as providing “Independent Insurance For Career People”, starting their relationship with customers as they start out on their career path as Students.

Endsleigh are an insurance intermediary so can search from the entire market for student car insurance deals, this is important as not all insurance companies like to insure students. One other important differentiation that is made between students is whether they are living away from home, for example in halls of residence, or at home with their parents. Some insurers that will insure students living at home, are not interested if they are living away, one can only assume this is due to the increased risk of theft or damage to a car that is left in a car park and potentially unattended for longer periods of time.

Contrary to what a lot of people might perceive, in a recent survey of students it was evident that insurance and other practical aspects of car ownership were the main factors considering when making car purchase decisions, ahead of things such as the speed or colour of the car. Reliability, safety, price and insurance group and fuel economy were the top 5 things that most students said would be top of their list.

In the same survey, some 55% of students disclosed that they had arranged their insurance themselves, whereas a rather large 45% were merely named drivers under their parent’s policies. This latter contingent are not actually doing themselves any favors, as they are not earning an no claims bonus in their own names, so when they do one day take out an insurance policy in their own name, it will be much more expensive that if they had accumulated some no claims discount. In addition, strictly speaking if the car belongs to the student it should be insured in the name of the regular driver and not in a parents name. In any event, in most instances the insurance companies will rate the premium on the highest risk driver anyway.

Breakdown cover is an added extra on most policies these days and with 67% of cars owned by students being over 6 years old, it might worth considering. It is probably not surprising that 25% of students had suffered at least one breakdown in the last 12 months and 11% more than one.