Car Insurance: Your Profession Affects Your Premium!

Back in the 80s, the comedian Jasper Carrott used to read verbatim some of the daft excuses people put on their car insurance claims forms as a part of his stand-up routine. He’d found wonderfully un-self-aware phrases like: “The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week” or “I don’t know who was to blame for the accident; I wasn’t looking” and “I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.”

But recent comments I’ve had have been more to do with the difficulty of getting a decent insurance price in the first place. That seems to be even more of a trial for some, particularly with car insurance.

Car Insurance Changes Depending on Your Job

For a start, Punty says “I work in television and I know it puts my insurance premiums up. I asked the woman on the phone why. She said it’s because I might give a lift to a celebrity one day. Really? You think Johnny Depp’s going to cadge a lift in the back of my Citroen C2 after a hard day’s filming? Do they know how it works?”

It does seem rather unfair, particularly when, according to insurers 1st Central, supposedly uber-sensible accountants are the worst drivers by profession. They’re involved in more than 16,000 accident claims a year. It’s not just them either! They’re followed closely by solicitors of all people, who are responsible for 15,000 claims and third are doctors who moved up the list by six places from ninth last year. So if you’re in a car, it’s a dashcam a day that ‘keeps the doctor away’.

It’s not just car insurance where the complaints come in either. Foxy says “I’m an artist and apparently that makes my home insurance more expensive. What do they think we do – sit around all day In our pants setting fire to the curtains?”.

Well, yes, sort of.

How insurers work things out

You might not think you’re just a number but that’s how insurers see you. They work out our riskiness on a points system according to your job (or lack of one). Professions are graded 1-3 and woe betide you if you’re in one of the high-risk categories, however puritanical your behaviour has been thus-far.

Of course, journalists, entertainers and – surprise, surprise – racing drivers have higher premiums. Interestingly, nurses and social workers have lower ones. This is not so much because they’re considered to be more sensible than us ‘luvvies’ but because these tend to be female-dominated professions. So, although an EU directive has made it illegal to charge women and men a different insurance rate, some companies are getting round it by charging less to people in supposed ‘girlie’ professions. Sneaky!

And it certainly helps to be clever when you describe your job to insurers. For example, t’s cheaper to be a ‘writer’ than a ‘copy-writer’. Oddly, it’s cheaper to be a ‘bricklayer’ than a ‘builder’. But it’s not a good idea to tell them you’re a nursery nurse if you’re a bomb disposal expert. That’s going to be tough to prove as you dig the shrapnel out of the bonnet! When you’re looking at your next car nsurance comparison quotes, try entering your job with different descriptions. If you’re a marketing manager, try just ‘marketing’ or ‘manager’ as an example – you could be surprised!

Do insurance black boxes work in your favour?

Of course, there are also now gadgets to monitor your driving and even prove your innocence in a prang, which can exonerate you if you’re (another high risk profession) a politician and someone rammed you because they didn’t like your face.

But they can work against you, too. Kimberley Doley commented on an article about using dashcams as evidence: “My children’s dad needs this dashcam desperately…. Not to protect him from insurance scams but to protect other road users. I hope it would make him think about his driving and make him a safer driver as it may embarrass him that he might end up on a Channel 5 programme like world’s worst drivers caught on tape!”.

And of course, when it comes to bringing your premiums down, the old favourite of simply comparing prices before you buy can save everyone money. It’s worth trying even if you just pretend to do it as Claude told me a while back. He said: “Call your car and home insurance company and tell them you want to go through all your coverage because you found another carrier that is cheaper. They’ll probably help you “find” 10% off or more.”

Yes, funny that…how they manage to ‘find’ that extra 10% off, even in the middle of a policy. Insurers must have coins down an awful lot of sofas!