No claims bonus only applies to one car?

SuprSi

A Spanish friend of mine has been calling around looking for insurance on a newly purchased car. He has been driving in Spain for around 20 years, has loads of no claims time, and would like to apply this to his Irish policy. Two things have come out of his enquiries that I wasn't aware of.

1) To get his no claims bonus here, he has to cancel his Spanish policy as the no claims bonus can only apply to one car
2) If he had two Irish cars, or anyone in Ireland did, your no claims bonus only applies to one car, meaning if you own two cars you have to pay the full insurance amount on one of them

Is this true? I would have thought that your no claims bonus applied to your license as opposed to what vehicle you're driving, so if you have 10 cars your bonus applies to all 10.

testicle

SuprSi wrote: »

A Spanish friend of mine has been calling around looking for insurance on a newly purchased car. He has been driving in Spain for around 20 years, has loads of no claims time, and would like to apply this to his Irish policy. Two things have come out of his enquiries that I wasn't aware of.

1) To get his no claims bonus here, he has to cancel his Spanish policy as the no claims bonus can only apply to one car
2) If he had two Irish cars, or anyone in Ireland did, your no claims bonus only applies to one car, meaning if you own two cars you have to pay the full insurance amount on one of them

Is this true? I would have thought that your no claims bonus applied to your license as opposed to what vehicle you're driving, so if you have 10 cars your bonus applies to all 10.

1. Yes obviously.

2. Initially, yes. After that, one can have 2 NCBs on 2 seperate cars.

deceit

What about if you ding one is the no claims wiped out on both then?

testicle

No

LoveDucati2

deceit wrote: »

What about if you ding one is the no claims wiped out on both then?

Possibly, because at renewel you must declare if you have had any accidents claims or convictions.
The insurance company will decide.

Motorcycles are the same. I have full NCB for bike and full NCB for car. A single incident of a crash, ban or points affects them all.

However in the UK you can have a bike and car policy with unlimited cars and bikes attached to it.

If you do not have a current vehicle, your NCB is only held for 2 years

SuprSi

testicle wrote: »

2. Initially, yes. After that, one can have 2 NCBs on 2 seperate cars.

Can you expand a bit on this. How long is initially, and does your second NCB start as if you had never been insured before? I don't understand how I could change cars and keep my NCB, yet if I have two cars I need two seperate NCB's - it doesn't make sense and seems like a good way for the insurance companies to rip you off.

Having said that I'm only ranting as I don't have two cars so it doesn't directly affect me.

CoDy1

The basic point of having 2 bonuses is that if you have an accident in one vehicle the bonus + premium wouldn't be affected on the other vehicle, whereas if it was one bonus for 2 vehicles your claim would affect the bonus and premium for both.

It then extends to the fact that even though you can't drive 2 vehicles and the same time, your spouse or any other named driver might be driving one vehicle while you are driving the other.

Hence one bonus per vehicle.

SuprSi

Ah, that makes sense. Thank you!