You can get insurance on most things these days. Cars, houses, technology, life, health. It can be a bit of a minefield. I’m not here to suggest that you should or shouldn’t get these things, but to tell you how to save money on your insurance renewals.

If you drive your own car, or own a home, it’s a legal requirement to have insurance. I’d always wished that you’d get a percentage of your premium back after a year without making a claim. I think it’d make fraudulent claims drop. But wishful thinking won’t get me anywhere. You need insurance, it costs money. End of.

What I am going to tell you is a simple way of saving yourself a few quid when it’s time to renew your insurance.

How to Save Money on Your Insurance Renewals

Insurance Renewals are part and parcel of the whole insurance game. It’s where some companies can get a bit sneaky help us out with automated renewals as the current policy comes to an end to make our lives easier. This is where they can automatically renew your policy and can end up costing you a fortune if you don’t do your homework before hand.

Pay off Insurance Renewals in full

It’s not always the easiest when the time comes, but the first way to save money is pay off your premium in full. Paying monthly may seem convenient, but with the majority of providers, you’ll pay extra in the long run for the pleasure of having a regular monthly outgoing. If it means you make a savings account to pay your monthly fee so that you’re prepared when the time comes, so be it. I’ve written about avoiding surprise costs of running a car and insurance is covered there. It’s not only a great idea for car insurance, but most other kinds too.

Check your Insurance Renewal Notifications

It may seem obvious, but companies have to send you physical or digital copies of your insurance renewal quote for you to review before committing to another year. A recent addition to this is that they also should provide last years premium costs to give you a comparison. Guess what, the price goes up. Year in year out, insurance renewal prices rise. Yes, there are more cars on the road than ever before, there are fraudulent “Crash for Cash” claims being raised left right and centre. But you don’t have to give in and pay extra!

Check your email or documents and see the difference in price. If this years quote is lower, lucky you! However, you can still get it cheaper. Keep reading.

Shop around for Insurance Renewals

Just as you should be doing with any other big purchase, shopping around for cheaper insurance is always recommended. It can be expensive after all! One thing that has made this a lot easier is the mass of comparison sites that are available to you now. When I first started driving, you’d have to phone each insurance company or get online quotes. Painstakingly annoying and boring.

Get your renewal quote to hand, and be clear on the finer details of the cover you’re looking to renew. Take all that information and drop it into at least two comparison sites. My preferred spread is three different comparison sites. It’s a little bit of hassle for potentially a big reward.

You will be surprised at how different the results will be on the different comparison sites, even for the same companies. The comparison sites make money from referring buyers to insurers, but they all take a different cut meaning different prices. It’s a pain, but worth doing.

Try Staying with the Same Insurer

This sounds like crazy talk, but hear me out. Changing insurers is a lot easier than it used to be, but changing is still hassle. I was with the same insurer for years before changing and after a few months, I’d completely forgotten who my insurer was. Not a good look if I had been pulled over by the police! Luckily I wasn’t. Anyway, staying with the same company…

After you’ve shopped around for your insurance renewals, you will likely find yourself with a cheaper quote. Fingers crossed anyway! As easy as it could be just to sign up there and then, get on the phone to your current company. They want to keep you as a customer, obviously. They like your money. Tell them you’ve found a cheaper quote online and ask if they can beat or match it. It’s a simple question that has often been answered in my favour.

I’ve found a cheaper insurance renewal quote online and I wanted to know if you can beat it?

After consulting with their manager/placing you on hold/going to the toilet/whatever they do, there’s usually three potential scenarios they will come back with to this simple question in my experience.

We Can’t Beat That Quote. Ok, Thank you for you service this past year, I’d like to cancel please. Cancel and be on your way. Take out a new policy with the cheaper quote provider.

We Can Match That Quote. Excellent. Please make the changes and take my money. – It’s less hassle to stay with the same company in my eyes, unless there’s something really not good about them. Matching a cheaper quote is ideal.

We Can Beat That Quote. [Angelic Chorus Sings] Why didn’t you send me that quote in the first place for my renewal, we could have all saved a lot of time and effort. But yes please thank you, I’ll take it.

Insurance Renewals. I’ll be back.

They come around every year. Keep a calendar in Google, or iCloud? Set a reminder for next year to remind you that it’s coming up. A month’s notice is good to remind you to get this work out of the way. The renewal documents then just serve as another reminder to GET THIS DONE!

The same kind of process can be used for many things, phone contracts, breakdown cover, tv subscriptions. Just think ahead!

Found any other ways of saving money when renewing insurance? Let us know in the comments!