Research by The Bike Insurer has revealed the most expensive places to insure a motorbike in the UK.
As you might expect, London leads the way as the most expensive place for motorbike insurance in the UK but maybe more surprising is the cost of motorbike insurance in the North West.
After London, which accounts for the 13 most expensive areas to insure your bike, the North West of England is the most expensive place for motorbike insurance premiums, according to the 900,000 motorcycle insurance quotes analysed by The Bike Insurer.
At the top of the tree are bikers in the Western Central London area who paid £691 for their bike insurance between January 2014 and February 2017.
The East London postcode is the second most expensive area in the UK, paying £647, with West London and North West London in third and fourth place paying £621 and £620 respectively.
It’s after the first 13 results that The Bike Insurer’s data gets more interesting with huge disparity in premiums revealed outside of London.
Manchester bikers found themselves paying £509 on average for motorcycle insurance while in Leeds the average premium was £449.
Surprisingly Birmingham, despite being the UK’s second largest city, has an average motorcycle premium of £445.
In Wales, Cardiff leads the way with an average premium of £366 while the average premium in Edinburgh is £328. Bikers in Belfast on average found themselves paying less for motorbike insurance as the average premium came to £295.
Big City Bias
The Bike Insurer’s data revealed that premiums in big cities are much higher than in towns, villages and countryside areas.
Surprisingly, this is not due to higher rates of claims caused by accidents or theft but the costs of claims themselves.
Over the three-year data period, almost £25m worth of claims were made in the UK, with around £18m claimed in cities alone, accounting for more than 70% of the total cost of all claims made.
Jon Morrell, CEO at The Bike Insurer, said: “We were actually surprised at what the data showed us because we expected higher claim rates in cities than in rural areas because of higher theft rates.
“What we actually found was that the number of claims per quote was the same in cities and in rural areas, despite much higher rates of theft in urban areas. The big difference was the cost of claims themselves; in cities they were more than double the cost of claims in non-city areas.”
“What we can take from this is that claims for bikes damaged in accidents are obviously much cheaper than claims for total loss following theft, where insurers will have to foot the bill of replacing a full motorcycle rather than just parts and repairs.”
How to lower motorcycle insurance costs
The Bike Insurer’s data also revealed the impact vehicle use, overnight storage and No Claims Bonus (NCB) has on motorbike insurance premiums.
On average, Social, Domestic and Pleasure (SDP) excluding commuting policies are £361, £25 cheaper than SDP including commuting and a huge £123 cheaper than Business Use policies.
Morrell said, “It’s fairly common knowledge that social policies are cheaper than business policies but what’s perhaps more interesting, is the relatively small difference in price between SDP excluding commuting and SDP including commuting.
“Some bikers may think it’s not worth the cost but at just £25 extra, and the ease commuting on two wheels brings, the information may change some people’s minds.”
When it comes to overnight storage, keeping your motorbike in a locked garage is key to reducing the cost of your motorcycle insurance, according to The Bike Insurer’s research.
If you store your motorbike in a locked garage overnight, the average premium policy comes in at £350. Keeping it on a driveway results in a £424 average and parking your bike on the road results in an average premium of £498; almost £150 more than it costs to store your bike in a locked garage.
The data also revealed that improving your NCB will result in dramatic reductions in the cost of your motorbike insurance too.
With just one year’s NCB, bikers can save as much as 21% on their annual premium; with nine years NCB racked up, bikers can save up to 70%.
Morrell commented: “It’s obvious that the more secure your bike is overnight, the less likely it is to get stolen or damaged, so the financial benefits of a locked garage have always been pretty obvious.
“The NCB data we’ve found is valuable because it shows the incremental reduction in cost of insurance for each year of NCB and therefore the real financial benefit of preserving your NCB.”
The Bike Insurer analysed around 870,000 motorcycle insurance quotes over a three year period. The data excludes quotes from The Channel Islands.