How we searched for the cheapest pay monthly car insurance
(There is a lot of information here - if you want to skip this please go straight to our price comparison analysis page.)
First we asked some people to get quotes for their car insurance, from their own choice of price comparison engine, and let us have the results. We wanted to try to discover:
The results were listed in the table below, and were inconclusive. The interest rates that were charged varied from a low of 0.8% up to 37.1% and there was no pattern emerging, so we moved on to stage 2.
| Comparer | Paid in full | Paid monthly | Difference | % Extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £680 | £744 | £64 | 10.9% |
| 1 | £779 | £1068 | £289 | 37.1% |
| 1 | £153 | £173 | £20 | 12.9% |
| 1 | £563 | £622 | £59 | 10.5% |
| 1 | £501 | £553 | £52 | 10.4% |
| 1 | £192 | £237 | £5 | 23.2% |
| 2 | £598 | £684 | £86 | 11.4% |
| 2 | £542 | £613 | £71 | 13.1% |
| 2 | £951 | £1080 | £129 | 13.6% |
| 3 | £536 | £588 | £52 | 9.1% |
| 3 | £687 | £785 | £98 | 14.3% |
| 3 | £636 | £676 | £40 | 10.6% |
| 3 | £370 | £424 | £54 | 14.5% |
| 3 | £479 | £537 | £58 | 12.1% |
| 3 | £444 | £506 | £62 | 14.0% |
| 3 | £156 | £173 | £17 | 10.8% |
| 4 | £568 | £627 | £59 | 10.3% |
| 4 | £614 | £679 | £65 | 10.5% |
| 4 | £471 | £594 | £123 | 26.1% |
| 5 | £166 | £186 | £20 | 12.2% |
| 6 | £171 | £201 | £31 | 18.1% |
| 7 | £473 | £477 | £4 | 0.8% |
Stage 2
We got five more people to get car insurance price comparisons using the same four comparison sites. The results are below and were VERY interesting. The cheapest prices for each motorist, for both yearly and monthly payments, are highlighted in yellow.
| Comparer | Paid in full | Paid monthly | Difference | % Extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £783 | £1170 | £387 | 49.4% |
| 2 | £790 | £1318 | 528 | 68% |
| 3 | £841 | £1753 | £912 | 108% |
| 4 | £786 | £1019 | £233 | 29.6% |
| Comparer | Paid in full | Paid monthly | Difference | % Extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £334 | £371 | £37 | 11.0% |
| 2 | £371 | £399 | £28 | 7.5% |
| 3 | £502 | £572 | £70 | 14.0% |
| 4 | £426 | £457 | £31 | 7.26% |
| Comparer | Paid in full | Paid monthly | Difference | % Extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £559 | £617 | £58 | 10.4% |
| 2 | £507 | £521 | £14 | 2.8% |
| 3 | £416 | £428 | £12 | 2.9% |
| 4 | £461 | £474 | £13 | 2.8% |
| Comparer | Paid in full | Paid monthly | Difference | % Extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £350 | £375 | £25 | 7.1% |
| 2 | £273 | £292 | £19 | 6.9% |
| 3 | £344 | £369 | £25 | 7.2% |
| 4 | £344 | £370 | £26 | 7.5% |
| Comparer | Paid in full | Paid monthly | Difference | % Extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £302 | £351 | £49 | 16.2 |
| 2 | £309 | £359 | £50 | 16.2 |
| 3 | £421 | £481 | £60 | 14.2 |
| 4 | £315 | 366 | 51 | 16.2 |
The results for motorist no.1 really made us sit up. Interest charges, taken from four different price comparison engines, varied from an awful 29.6% right up to an eye-watering 108%! A little discrete probing revealed that, yes, the person who got these results has had a number of credit problems in the past.
Motorist no.2, with charges varying from 7.26 to 14.0% was an average salaried person with no credit history problems.
Motorists no.3 and no.4, with charges of 2.8% to a (seemingly high) 10.4%, and 6.9% to 7.5% respectively, are late middle aged homeowners with valuable cars to insure.
Motorist no.5 is a retired pensioner, who comes from an era when obtaining credit was considered to be a disgrace; therefore this person has no credit history. We wondered if this was the reason for the interest charges to be so consistently above average, at 16.2%, 16.2%, 14.2% and 16.2% again, despite the fact that the quotes were from four different insurers from four different search engines.
Two more interesting points we noticed: Firstly, no one comparison site had a monopoly of the cheapest quotes; and the lowest quote for monthly payments doesn't necessarily come from the insurer with the cheapest price for yearly payment (see motorist no.1 results).
Now please see our analysis page