Martin Lewis reveals exact time to renew car insurance when your deadline is approaching

Martin Lewis has shared the ‘sweet spot’ date when you should renew your car insurance.

With many motorists seeing their premiums rise, even when they haven’t claimed, it’s absolutely worth putting in a bit of leg work to see if you can help lower the cost.

And to help you on your way, the Money Saving Expert shared the exact date you should start getting new quotes when your renewal is pending.

Lewis is back with his ITV show Martin Lewis Money Show Live, where he tackles money-related questions from viewers, and this week an unhappy motorist was amongst those who had written in.

The driver had seen their insurance cost hiked up by more than £4,500 this year compared to last. Ouch.

They wrote: “My car insurance with RAC was £250 last year, this year it was £4,900.”

And this person is far from alone, with Lewis saying insurance quotes had risen by an average of 61 percent in the last year, while insurance renewals had gone up by 30 percent.

ITV

Lewis went on to reveal how motorists could potentially ‘halve’ their costs, while warning that after a certain point they just begin to ‘rise and rise and rise’. Not what you want, eh?

He explained: “If you are near your renewal, getting quotes three weeks before may halve the cost.

“We ran 18,000,000 quotes, it starts to drop at around 30 days, you get into the sweet spot around three to four weeks before.

“It bottoms out on average at day 23, and then the prices just start to rise and rise and rise.

“Everyone needs to get in their diary that 23 days before renewal because that’s the sweet spot.”

ITV

He also shared the reason that insurance companies hit those who leave it last minute with hefty hikes.

“The type of people who leave getting quotes until the last minute before their renewal are the type of people who are high risk when it comes to home and car insurance and make more claims,” he said.

“So by doing this at the right time, you’re effectively saying to the insurer, ‘Hi I’m not going to be making the claim a couple of years. So you can trust me and charge me a lower price’.”

Offering more tips, he told households with more than one car to check if a multi-car policy would work out cheaper, while newer drivers could also save by adding a ‘responsible second or possibly third driver’ to their policy.

Topics: Martin Lewis, Money, UK News, Cars

Claire Reid

Claire is a journalist at LADbible who, after dossing around for a few years, went to Liverpool John Moores University. She graduated with a degree in Journalism and a whole load of debt. When not writing words in exchange for money she is usually at home watching serial killer documentaries surrounded by cats. You can contact Claire at [email protected]