As you steel yourself for trying to find young driver insurance at a price that you – or a helpful parent or relative – might find affordable, it may be tempting simply to pretend that you are only going to be a named driver whilst a more mature, experienced person is going to be the principal driver.
That way, you tell yourself, may be the path to staying on the road without it costing the arm and a leg that insurance for your drivers typically costs.
If you think such a subterfuge might pull the wool over your insurer’s eyes, it is time to think again.
You need to have second thoughts about spinning such a tale for two main reasons:
- the practice of an experienced driver falsely claiming to be the main driver simply to allow a young named driver onto the same policy is known as fronting. Fronting amounts to insurance fraud and is illegal – as the police unit’s National Fraud and Cybercrime Reporting Centre, Action Fraud, makes clear;
- if you have obtained insurance by deception, not only is the cover invalid, but it also leave you liable for prosecution for failing to have appropriate insurance cover (a conviction that carries a stiff fine and, usually, a driving disqualification);
- the Telegraph’s Honest John also advises – in an article dated the 17th of January 2015 – that the practice is simply not allowed by insurers, who are entitled to reject any claim in its entirety if it later emerges that deception was used to arranged the cover by falsely declaring that a mature driver was the principal driver and the youngster solely a named driver on the policy.
The reason that some individuals might be tempted into criminal action to obtain insurance cover that ultimately proves entirely worthless, of course, is the completely false economy of it appearing to be cheaper than the premiums typically charged by an insurer prepared to extend cover to someone under the age of 25 years.
If cover is offered at all, the high price is generally a function of the insurer’s assessment that a younger driver is a greater risk than a more experienced driver – at greater risk of being involved in a traffic accident, committing a motoring offence and costing the insurer the settlement of either your own or a third party’s insurance claim.
Life does not have to be as tough as this however, since there are specialist insurance providers – such as those of us here at GSI Insurance – who take an altogether more helpful approach to young driver insurance.
If you are aged between 17 and 25 – and especially if you are looking to arrange motor insurance for the first time in your life – we recognise that it may prove both difficult and expensive.
A specialist insurer, therefore, takes into account and considers more favourably the specific needs of the younger driver and considers their need to stay street legal. This may come with the recognition that there are some steps the young driver might take to reduce the risk of accidents and claims, but the first foot on the motor insurance ladder may then lead to a lifetime free of major incidents – at a price that even the younger driver may find affordable.