Money Watch – Personal Finance Blog

My car insurance is up in the next couple of weeks, so I recently received my renewal notice from my current car insurer, Tesco.

The premium they were quoting had gone up by a few pounds per month, and I knew that a renewal quote is a great way to save some money. Dare I say I was actually quite excited by the opportunity this presented?!

Anyway, in order to get a good spread of the car insurance market, I did a few quotes on Tesco Compare, Go Compare, MoneySupermarket and Confused.com – and the insurer which kept coming up with the cheapest premium was Esure. Remarkably, the premium was more than half that Tesco was quoting (made even cheaper by the fact that I could afford to pay the new policy off in a lump sum, not monthly by Direct Debit which usually includes a relatively hefty interest charge).

To ensure I was getting like-for-like cover, which you need to do to properly compare insurance quotes, I used Tesco’s own car insurance comparison tool which has a handy feature so that you can compare insurer’s policy details side by side, and I was encouraged to see that Esure’s policy pretty much matched Tesco’s item for item – no massive differences in excesses, cover provided etc. 

I’ve been a Tesco car insurance customer for 5 or 6 years, but this just goes to show that loyalty in financial products doesn’t always pay, and you should always get a range of quotes when you’re looking to take out or renew an insurance policy – there can be big savings to be had if you’re willing to shop around.

Now, my next stop for a healthy saving is on my mobile phone bill, which I should be tackling in the next few days…