By Simon Christopher

When you get a quote for motor insurance, one of the many pieces of personal information they use to assess you as an insurance risk is your occupation.

Insurers can use your job as a shorthand way of assessing how you are likely to drive and factor this into your premiums.

This isn’t just about the driving skills of people in particular jobs, but also factors such as how much time they are likely to spend driving, whether they are likely to drive quickly to meet deadlines, and even whether they’ll be likely to have a celebrity as a passenger, making the potential damages claims from a crash higher!

What Else About a Job Might Affect Premiums?

People who carry expensive tools, such as a plumber or electrician, may have to pay higher rates. This isn’t to cover the cost of replacing stolen items (this won’t always be covered by the policy), but rather to reflect the higher risk of somebody breaking into the car and thus damaging it requiring repair.

Is This Legal?

In most cases, yes. Insurers are generally allowed to use any reason they like for setting rates. In some areas, such as charging different rates based on gender, this must be based on clear statistical evidence to avoid breaching discrimination laws. With jobs, an insurer could, if it wanted, charge tax inspectors more just because it doesn’t like them. In practice insurers will use data about the likelihood of people in particular jobs to need to make a claim.

Can I Get Round This?

It’s not permissible to flat-out lie on a policy: doing so can mean you’ll have a claim refused, have your policy cancelled without a refund of the premiums, and find it harder to get insurance in the future.

You can, however, take advantage of the fact that job titles don’t fall into precise categories. For example, somebody who falls into the general category of journalist might be described as an editor, a proof reader, an editorial assistant or a reporter, all of which could carry different premiums depending on the insurer and policy.

This means that when using a car insurance price comparison site or some other service that allows you to check premium costs before making a formal application, it may be worth trying different job occupations to find the cheapest that you can reasonably class yourself in. There’s an element of judgment about this, so one rule of thumb would be “Would I consider myself honest if I described my work in this way at a party?”

What About Self Employment or Agency Work?

Usually a standard motor insurance policy only covers you for work-related driving when you are going to or from a regular place of work. If you are self-employed, or work on a temp, agency or contract basis in multiple locations, you’ll usually have to declare this and pay a higher rate. If you don’t do this and crash on the way to work, you may not be covered.

About the Author: To discover more ways to cut your motoring costs without cutting cover, visit UK Insurance Index where you’ll find a list of the most popular

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Source:

isnare.com

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