How can I cut the cost of import car insurance?
Last Modified 17th of February 2021
It is a well known fact that imported cars and vehicles are generally more expensive to insure than their equivalent UK produced (or UK spec) vehicles. There are a few reasons for this but that’s not much comfort if you are trying to find affordable insurance for a vehicle that you want to import. There are a few things you can do to get a better price…
Make sure it is parallel
There are two types of import: grey and parallel. Parallel imported vehicles are generally built in the EU or to EU spec and as such are closer to UK standards. Grey imports are often built to Asian spec and insurance companies tend not to like them as much.
Shop around
This goes without saying really. There are a few specialist insurance companies who cater to imported vehicles, but don’t assume that they will be the cheapest option. Unless you are importing a particularly rare vehicle you might well find that the cheapest option is just a standard mainstream insurer.
Compare, reduce mileage and experiment
Other than that you just need to do what you would do with any other car and keep the costs down by experimenting with different levels of excess, by reducing your mileage (if possible) and perhaps get additional security if doing so makes financial sense.
Ultimately the best way to keep down your costs is to either not buy an import in the first place or to buy a relatively small, low-powered import. In the case of most imported vehicles it is fact that they are relatively valuable and/or high performance- and that causes the additional cost. If you were to import a Fiat Punto, for instance, it would not be a lot more expensive to insure that a UK version.
