Insurance quotes for a new GS

[MartinS]

Hi all,

First post, sorry its a question! I had not anticipated posting until I took delivery of my bike which should be this week all being well. This is aimed at people who may have insured new bikes I think.

Been looking around for insurance quotes and they are coming back higher than I expected. My initial thoughts are that it is purely down to the insured value.

This is for a new R1200GS TE. Insured value I'm listing at £16,000 including accessories, it is going to be worth less with 1 owner (me) on it, but I need to speak to BMW regarding the market value once I've actually taken delivery I suppose.

I'm 35, 2 years NCD, full unrestricted lic. from July '11. No claims/convictions. Locked garage at semi-rural postcode. Pillion cover. No additional security above factory alarm/immobiliser (for quote purposes).

Comparison sites are around £750 fully comp. BMW Motorrad Insurance (Devitt) want £720.

As a guide, last years bike was a Yamaha FZ1n on an 08 plate with an insured value of £5000. Fully comp. I paid £240 which I thought was fine considering the power and this is why the quote for the BMW has taken me by surprise somewhat. Prior to the FZ1, I had a Honda Firestorm for a year.

Given the above, does the quote seem reasonable? To be fair the insured value of the BMW will be more than 3x the value of the Yamaha, and it is almost literally 3x the insurance quote so I'm not going to cry about it but it would be nice to clarify. Does anyone perhaps have experience of being in this situation or similar and can maybe provide some insight?

Looking forward to some serious riding this summer, I'll be sacrificing some donuts to the weather gods next week.

Thanks,

Martin

PS. Tried Bikesure (thought they were a sponsor here), they wanted £1400.

 

[Eunuch]

Hi Martin and welcome.

Up until the point you mentioned how reasonable the FZ1 was the only point I thought of making was it must be the NCD. Now I'm not so sure. Perhaps some friendly insurance insider/expert will shed some light.

I'm just shy of 50, maxed out NCD, 3 points m'Lord, one write-off (wrote off a GS hitting a deer), crappy mid-city postcode and though locked up in a garage it's still £430 fully comp for a 2013 TE and a 3 years old Street Triple R. If you remove the 3 point & deer incident blemishes I'd guess I come in somewhere nearer £300.

Either way, good luck with the quotes and have fun with the bike - overall it really is a great package and you can have fun all year round with here and abroad. I had mine ACF50 treated last year but wished I'd put some on by hand to some of the bolts and connectors that took a hammering thru some winter riding as any bike would on salted roads. Don't buy a brand new bike often and one thing I regretted not paying more attention to.

 

[baku_mackem]

I've recently bought a 2013 pre-owned TE with 700miles on it for just over £10k from Coopers BMW in Sunderland, service etc was excellent. They offered as part of the package free 5 day insurance so I phoned up to activate it and to my anger was told they wouldn't offer to insure due to the value of the bike.

I explained that it was within book price and from a BMW dealer but they wouldn't budge. When I phoned Coopers about this they said this has happened several times

I then phoned my current bike insurer (MCN) who I have a multi-bike policy with to add the new TE to the policy. They declined also due to value. I am getting worried at this point as I am thinking I've been had.

So I entered my current insurer's website and got a stand alone quote for the new TE, and guess what...... they offered insurance (£410 fully comp). I am 45yrs old, 1yrs NCB, full driving and riding license (only held latter for 3yrs), NE postcode, garaged, no bike alarm, 3 pts for speeding.

Moral of the tale is insurance companies are a pack of thieving gimps, so if you don't like the look of the package they are giving you (inc the price) then shop around.

The days of being loyal to one insurance company are long gone.


PS - love the GS, wish I'd bought one sooner.

 

[MartinS]

Thanks fellas. Could it be because I dont have a registration number yet, or is my age really affecting it that much, surely not at 35?

This is bizarre. All insurers are coming back in the region of £700, up to over £1,000. Based on what you guys are saying, the only difference is my age to baku's example really plus I have an extra year NCB. Different post code but this is not a high crime area by any means.

Hope someone has some insight here from the industry because I cant make much sense of it. It could literally be that I've stepped over some "value" threshold perhaps.

 

[Gargy]

Just to annoy you a bit more............... 51 yrs old, full NCD, no points on lic, Gloucester suburbs, £15,000 TE.

£254.00 fully comp with £175 excess. No legal or breakdown cover included.

Give ' A Plan 'a ring....................... 01452 229545.

Good luck.

 

[JohnnyBoxer]

I think it's 3 things

Your age

Your relative inexperience (had a licence for less than 3 years & only 2 years NCD)

The value & performance of the bike

You are a big risk on an expensive bike - hence the risk rating & premiums over £700 plus

They are all judging you similarly, so you must be high risk in their eyes as a relatively inexperienced motorcyclist

 

[Andyram]

Your job title can have a bit of an impact - this a general point and not specific to this thread in particular.
So, if you have a look on moneytsavingexpert.com, there's a tool that compares the relative premium costs for a variety of similar jobs. For example if put transport manager in and you pay £500 it will list 20 or so job titles with their premium rates. You can't be too 'creative', but as long as the one you choose can legitimately be used to describe your job, it will save you a few quid.

Useful for 'tight wads' like me.

Mod - feel free to repost, but let Martin have the chance to see and benefit from it first please

 

[JKW]

Before Wapping starts telling some home truths....

Martin and baku, I don't want to be cruel (or a clever-dick ) but didn't it occur to you to get some quotes before you committed yourself to spending 5 figures worth of beer tokens on your new toy? Anyhow...

JB is probably spot on - my company writes quotation engines for insurance products and age and value are two of the most important rating factors for all motor premiums - for bikes, length of time licence held has always been a big factor too because inexperience + a high-powered bike = big claims. This is why many aggregator (quote comparison sites) now want to know how long you have been riding recently as well as when you passed your test.

The job title advice is good, but some of the biggest variations are not well catered for online - for example, say you are a Sales Manager and have to attend 2 different locations for your work, you will need 'business use' for commuting cover. Most websites default to the ABI classification (Sales Manager - Travelling) when you enter your job title - rating for this class (especially if you need 'business us cover') can be much higher than for 'Sales Manager - non-Travelling'...it depends entirely on the logic employed when the insurance company designs the product.

Finally, you will rarely, if ever, get the best premium through on-line searches, especially if you are at the high-risk end of the market (which you are, unfortunately) - so, as Gargy advises, pick up the 'phone and do the rounds of specialist brokers - it's time-consuming and a PITA but usually worth it.

 

[Neil W]

My current job title gives me low quotes , I retire in 2 months time so got a quote with RETIRED as my profession and it doubled because I become a greater risk ....

I said put in retired (then my profession) in the job title and it went back down to the old figure

 

[MartinS]

Thanks all for the input, it is appreciated. My profession is a company director which is considered low risk as I'm in computing. I think its the bike value, I'm going to estimate its used value as a 1 owner bike. I'm thinking 1,500 quid off the new price would be about right?

The highest quote received so far is: £27,108.20 from Motorcycle Direct. Bravo to them. LOL.

 

[MartinS]

Hi JKW,

To be honest, I didn't give it too much weight when choosing a bike for the following reasons. My first bike at 18 was a 125, since then I've never had anything smaller than a litre bike. I used to live in the US and had a bandit 12 for years. Had a break from biking for some years before getting a UK licence then got myself a VTR1000 (nostalgic for me) and then an FZ1. The FZ is a much more powerful bike than the GS as well as being a higher group so I honestly never thought the GS would be so extreme to insure, aside from expecting an increase due to the higher bike value.

The VTR cost me £420 TPFT but thats having just passed my test and with 0 NCD. I didn't carry any no claims to the FZ1 because I sold the VTR early and the insurance lapsed. FZ1 0 full years on licence and 0 years NCD was £431 fully comp. So you can perhaps see why I didn't think much about insuring the GS when I'm older and 2 full years on licence with 2 years NCD...

I did look around the forum and was seeing quotes of around £250 for people with more experience, so I expected around £400 tops, just not £700-800.

So that was my thinking Yes I should have got a quote I suppose, it's not stopping the show anyway, I will take delivery this week all being well.

 

[Hammy]

I'm 41 with 3 years NCD. MY 2014 r1200gs te is £198.45 with express insurance. This includes an introductory discount of £75.

I got the quote through gocompare


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Paulontheball]

I'm 50, have a 2010 GSA now valued at £9k (it's loaded), I have held a full licence for 33 years, had some time off riding bikes but came back to it 13 years ago, bike is garaged with additional security on garage, fairly good post code, BMW alarm fitted, clean licence, member of IAM and so called qualified advanced rider, one accident with a German van driver knocking me off a dealer loan bike 2 years ago (so much for advanced training!) and still being argued about, and I'm a marketing manager doing a limited amount of business travel, car owner...... Cost to me £130 each year with £250 combined excess from Hastings

 

[Ozz]

Just got my insurance sorted today.
43 yrs old. License since 97. Zero NCB. Garaged with Abus black city chain. GS TE. Has quotes as low as £295 fully comp with £250 excess. Went with LV. £315 fully comp, pillion cover, £200 excess and no more than 20,000miles a year social & pleasure. North Yorks address.

 

[Ozz]

The main thing that LV stipulates was that the bikes value was less than £15000. Given that the shop floor price was £14080 I was alright. You may have to adjust the value you have the bike listed as.

 

[MartinS]

The main thing that LV stipulates was that the bikes value was less than £15000. Given that the shop floor price was £14080 I was alright. You may have to adjust the value you have the bike listed as.

Hi Ozz,

The difficulty there is that adding accessories pushes it well over their limit. Still, probably worth giving them a call as they might weight the value of accessories seperately. LV have never been that cheap for me in the past for some reason, your quote sounds very reasonable though.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions, I'll ring round as soon as I have a reg. number. No news on delivery as of yet.

 

[Gossy]

5 years ago I did the same, bought a GS, then as the delivery date got closer got some quotes, all of the comparison sites were £750 + based on being 50 and having passed my test 6 months previously.

At the time the BMW quote came in at £360 which I found strange, this years renewal is £192, at least yours should decrease year by year too.

 

[Deleted account 260111001]

I'm about to ditch my MCE insurance as they don't cover accessories, what extra cover they do provide is very limited.

If for example I add engine protection bars, and extra lights,then they are not covered, BMW themselves are limited on what they cover, and when I looked I to it. They won't cover their own sat nav.

 

[MartinS]

Hi all,

Further to my original post. I can confirm that it is a strange risk rating for the postcode that is causing the issue. I had one major insurer refuse cover completely. It is due to fraud activity in the area apparently and they will not insure anyone from XX1 1 through to XX4 1 post codes. Completely ludicrous in this case as where I live is a sleepy village with virtually no crime to speak of.

Had a long chat with the underwriter and I am going to speak to the classification company who deal with post codes to see what has caused it.

This has obviously happened within the past year, hence the massive increase in premiums I'm seeing.

 

[JohnnyBoxer]

Hi all,

Further to my original post. I can confirm that it is a strange risk rating for the postcode that is causing the issue. I had one major insurer refuse cover completely. It is due to fraud activity in the area apparently and they will not insure anyone from XX1 1 through to XX4 1 post codes. Completely ludicrous in this case as where I live is a sleepy village with virtually no crime to speak of.

Had a long chat with the underwriter and I am going to speak to the classification company who deal with post codes to see what has caused it.

This has obviously happened within the past year, hence the massive increase in premiums I'm seeing.

Which village...............so we can avoid that postcode