WHAT ARE CAR INSURANCE GROUPS?

When buying new cars you will find that they will fall into a car insurance group numbered between 1 and 20. The exceptions to this are kit cars, imports and conversions. In simple terms, the higher the insurance group number, the higher the risk that the insurer perceives there to be and the higher the premium you will pay.

As a rough guide you can add £30 to the cost of your comprehensive cover each time you go up an insurance group from 1 up to 15. However, once you have passed 15 each step could mean an increase by as much as £2000. It is important to remember that these insurance groups are only there as a guide and that the insurance companies do not have to use them but you will find that most do.

The insurance car groups are also there to make sure the car manufacturers make their cars as secure as possible and fit effective security systems. In addition to the insurance group rating of between 1 and 20, a letter will follow this number which indicated the assessment of the security of the car. These letters denote

• E – Exceeding the security requirement for the insurance group
• A – Acceptable. The car meets the standard requirements.
• P – Provisional. The assessment is incomplete at model launch date.
• D – This rating indicates that the vehicle does not reach the standard security measures expected of a car in this insurance group.
• U – The security of this vehicle is significantly below the requirements. This could result in a security upgrade.

Who allocates the car insurance groups?

The Insurance Group Rating Panel and Lloyds Market Association (LMA)) allocates groups to new cars based on research by the Motor Insurance Repair Research Centre.

What is important to the allocation of a car insurance group?

New car price, performance, repair costs, body shell and parts prices are all taken into account when allocating the car insurance group.

Are there any examples of cars and their insurance groups?

The entire Citroen C1 range falls into insurance group 1, as do certain variants of the Citroen C2. An example of a mid-range insurance group 10 would be the Honda Civic 2.2 i-CDTi range and the Audi A3 1.9 TDI range.

What cars fall into the highest insurance group 20?

Well, the entire Bentley and Aston Martin range for a start. An example of an individual car that falls into insurance group 20 is the BMW M5.