in which you pay the most for your car insurance
Analysis carried out by Moneysupermarket.com has revealed that motorists in East Sussex are the most likely to claim on their insurance for having their vehicle stolen. The UK’s leading price comparison website’s analysis of data from insurance claims showed that over four per cent of motorists in the East Sussex village of Winchelsea have made a claim on their motor insurance for theft in the past five years, with Saltbury-by-the-sea in Cleveland and the village of Godstone in Surrey coming in second and third place.
However, the occurrence of robberies affecting small rural centres is not reflected in how car insurance premiums are weighted across the country. The highest premiums are charged in inner city areas of Manchester and Birmingham, where motorists pay around £500 more each year than the average premium in the cheapest areas in the country in Scotland and Cornwall where they pay £355.
A driver’s postcode is often the biggest, and sometimes the sole, contributing factor in calculating insurance premiums, leading to dramatic variations. The postcode is used to measure local risk factors looking at crime, flooding and even an areas claims history or its number of accident hotspots. Simon Warsop, director of pricing for Norwich Union, describes how insurers ‘look not only at a single postcode but… claims in the surrounding postcodes’ and how ‘a particular postcode might be seen as a target for car theft because [their neighbourhood] has an easy getaway route’. Insurers have even been accused of ‘redlining’ high-risk postcodes and refusing to quote on them.
The research also shows that more affluent areas are affected by an increase in home insurance premiums, as claim values are generally higher. Unsurprisingly, Greater London has the most expensive home insurance. All of the top ten most expensive postcodes for home insurance are in the greater London area: Stanmore in Harrow, has the highest average premium, alongside Golders Green, Southwark, Mill Hill, Northwood, Edgeware, Brent, Barnes and Winchmore - Bournemouth in Dorset has the cheapest.
Hahaha....I can't seem to decide. I'm not so sure about where I pay the most on my insurance.
Posted by: free lance writer | January 20, 2012 at 12:56 PM