The amount of your third party liability insurance premium depends on many factors, and one of the most important is your insurance history. What is particularly important and what should you know before choosing a specific offer? Check it in the article below. We invite you to read and encourage you to save money.

Why does insurance history affect the amount of OC?

Each OC operates within the same regulatory range, so insurance companies fight for car customers with competitive prices.

However, this does not mean that everyone can count on equally low prices for the mandatory policy. On the contrary: there is a relatively small group of drivers for whom liability insurance is a considerable expense. Who are they? There is a high probability that people without an attractive (from insurers point of view) insurance history.

Let’s start with the fact that insurers reward drivers with low premiums, who seem to be “dream clients”. Dream customers are those who do not cause damage that the insurer would have to cover. For this reason on more favorable insurance conditions can count mainly:

• owners of “safe” cars – city, small-liter, family cars,
• people bringing up children, forming a family – are treated as more responsible and careful,
• Inhabitants of regions, where statistically there are less collisions and accidents.

The most expensive OC is the domain of young and inexperienced drivers. This happens for two reasons. The first is the awareness of insurers that the 18-24 year olds are the most frequent culprits of accidents. According to police data, in 2020 alone they were the perpetrators of 3774 accidents with 431 fatalities (and the accident rate per 10,000 population is as high as 13.82 for this age group).

The second reason for insurers’ “aversion” to young drivers is their insurance history… or rather lack thereof. And this is a direct result of the rule of granting discounts for blameless driving, which we describe below.

Harmless driving, or how to earn and lose discounts on MTPL

For each year of blameless driving, that is for each year in which you did not cause an accident or collision, you receive a specified percentage discount from the insurance company. How much exactly? It depends on the individual terms and conditions of the insurance company, although it is generally accepted that it is 10%. The maximum level of discounts for most insurers is 60%. So it is easy to calculate that by driving without any harm for 6 years you will get a 60% discount. It is worth noting that the discounts you have earned are honored by subsequent companies to which you move, e.g. due to a more attractive calculation and proposal.

Discounts can be lost by no harmless driving or lack of continuity of the policy. When you are the perpetrator of a brawl, accident or collision, the insurance company covers the damage, but also takes away a part (e.g. 15-20%) of your discounts, and your Third Party Liability policy automatically becomes more expensive the next year, when you have to renew it. Therefore, there is a direct relationship between insurance history and premium. When you take your first steps behind the wheel, you don’t really have time to work out maximum discounts. That will happen at least in a few years.