Introduction
At Alternative Insurance Brokers, we specialise in finding people Impounded Car Insurance policies. We have years of experience of matching people who have impounded cars, and the policies that they need to get them back. We are market specialists in helping people get their cars out of police impounds – whatever the reasons they might have been taken.
You might have a number of questions about why you need would need to get impounded car insurance, or why your regular car insurance is not enough. You might also have questions about who we are, and why you should choose us to purchase your insurance, rather than someone else.
This article will explain who we are, what we do and why. We will also explain as much as we can about how the impounded market works, and our position in it. Hopefully when you have read the article, you’ll have a better idea what Impounded Insurance is for, why you might need to get it, what our policies offer in comparison to similar policies, and how we can do business with you.
Why Have the Police Seized my Car?
The Police can seize a car (or almost any vehicle for that matter), for a huge variety of reasons. At Alternative Insurance Brokers, we can get you insurance that will retrieve your vehicle for any of them. The depth of experience we have, and the wide breadth of our panel of insurers mean that we can help you out, regardless of why the police took your car.
Essentially, the main reasons that the police can impound your car are due to illegal activity they at least suspect you of. If the police believe that you have been involved in wrong doing, or suspect that you might have used your car improperly, they will often be able to impound it.
One of the most common themes in car impoundings is insurance. The police often impounds vehicles for their drivers having no insurance. This gives you an IN10 code on your licence (which refers to using a vehicle uninsured against third party risks). This also includes drivers who believe themselves to be covered – but are not. A great many of the people we help to find impounded car insurance have had their car seized while they thought they were properly insured.
The police can impound your vehicle for a wide variety of driving offences. These generally come under the category of DD offences (DD10, DD40, DD60, DD80, DD90) – or DR codes (DR10, DR20, DR40 etc). These generally refer to either driving improperly (DR20 – driving or attempting to drive when unfit through drink, or DR70 – failing to provide a specimen. They can also refer to driving aggressively, dangerously or causing damage to other through your driving.
Why Can’t I Use Regular Insurance?
Many of our customers complain that it does not seem fair to them that they cannot use their standard car insurance. This is especially the case if the car was seized for reasons other than the driver having no insurance. People are often surprised to find that the insurance they have relied on in the past is apparently no longer valid.
The reason that regular car insurance does not work for cars in the impound is largely unknown to many people. This is because the reasons is usually hidden deep within the terms and conditions, or the policy wording. Many people don’t properly read their policy documents (if they read them at all).
Many motor insurance policies do state that they do not cover vehicles that have been impounded. As an insurance policy is an agreement, you have agreed that your car is not in the impound, nor will it be. If your car is later seized and impounded, you have broken the agreement you made (or so insurers think). This means that they are justified in cancelling your insurance policy – as you are not abiding by the terms they have set.
Whether you have genuinely done anything to allow the police to impound your car or not, the insurance that you would usually purchase is no longer valid for an impounded vehicle. That is where impounded car insurance steps in. We find policies for cars that do specifically cover impounded vehicles. This means that they will cover a car that the police have taken.
Introduction to the Impounded Car Insurance Market
There are not many insurers that will consider an impounded vehicle. As a result, impounded vehicle insurance is a high specialised market. We have relationships with all the major impounded vehicle insurance providers, and the experience of the market necessary to get the best deals with them. Two of the most important insurers who work within the impounded car insurance market are Granite Underwriting (also known as Haven), and Sparta. We have long running business associations with both of these insurers, and have the relationships with them necessary to make our business as competitive as possible for you. Prices with insurers are highly impacted by targets. Often, we are able to directly contact the insurers at these companies, and if you have already received a quote elsewhere, we can convince the underwriters to match or beat the price.
What Affects the Rates?
The prices of impounded car insurance policies might seem very expensive to the casual observer. However, there are a number of factors which affect the prices vastly more than others. Perhaps the most significant of these is age. The underwriters we work with won’t offer cover to people under 21. However, people below the age of 30 are rated as the most expensive by our insurers. People over the age of 30, are treated as lower risks, and as such get lower rates.
Our rates are not affected by where you live, or where your car is kept. Unlike some policies you might see, our policies are not dependent on postcode. In particular, this affects London – as some brokers add additional costs to people with London postcodes. Our rates are equally unaffected by your occupation – if we can cover you, it doesn’t matter what you do. Finally, our rates are also not dependent on licence type – so whatever you drive, we should be able to cover you.
Why we Offer the Policies we Do
The policies that we sell are tailored specifically to the people that need them most. The policies that we sell have been developed in line with the most common police department wishes. As it is the police that have the final say over whether your vehicle is released or not, we try to ensure that all our policies match their requirements.
Most police departments and impounds request that you take out a policy that lasts at least 30 days. That is in line with what most of the insurers on the market offer. Some other providers of impounded insurance will offer you a single day policy, or one that covers a few days. This is contrary to the advice of most police departments.
We offer the policies that we do because we want them to be as broadly applicable as possible. We offer 30 day policies, so that you should be able to use them, regardless of where you are or which impound your car is in.
What Can we Offer?
Our policies have been developed to ensure that you get the best cover you can, and the widest cover that is available. Our policies are all 30 days long. They cover you to remove your vehicle from the police impound, and work as regular third party insurance policies for up to 30 days after you manage to recover your car from the police.
Our impounded car insurance policies are all third party only. This is for two reasons – because it makes the policies cheaper, and insurers willing to provide comprehensive policies are limited. We also only offer policies to the owner and registered keeper of the vehicle. This means that only a single driver can use our policies.
What Can’t we Offer?
There are some policies that we are not able to offer. You might think that if all you need the policy for is to remove the car from the impound, you will only need a single day’s cover. However, this is not something that we can offer. Some insurers offer single day policies, or policies that last for a few days. Despite these policies being on sale, they are often not acceptable to police departments, and may therefore not actually release your vehicle.
Often, the police stop people and impound their vehicles for driving with no insurance on the car. As a result of this, the people that want to recover these vehicles are not their owner and registered keeper. In accordance with the most common wishes of police departments and insurers, we only offer policies to the vehicle’s official owner and registered keeper.
We can also only offer cover to people who are within certain age limits. Due to the terms set by the insurers that we work with, we can only offer impounded policies to people of the age of 21 and above, and below the age of 70. If you don’t fit within these age ranges, we could still cover your vehicle if you were to re-register it into the name of someone who does fit the characteristics.
What If I Can’t Legally Drive the Vehicle Out?
A common problem that many of our customers have suffered from before is being unable to legally drive their vehicle out of the impound. This is often as a direct consequence of the same reason their vehicle was impounded in the first place. If you were driving without a licence, or were banned from driving, you will likely not be able to legally drive the car out of the impound.
This is not necessarily a major impediment to you actually being able to recover the vehicle however. While you might not be able to recover the vehicle, if you know someone over the age of 21 who is legally able to drive, you can transfer the vehicle’s registration to them. They will then be able to purchase an impounded car insurance policy for the car, and use it to recover the vehicle on your behalf.
This is often also a cheaper option if you are too young to purchase an impounded insurance policy. As previously discussed, we are unable to provide policies to people under the age of 21. People who are too young would be able to transfer ownership in the same way. A person over the age of 30 would also likely receive a much cheaper policy than a person between the ages of 21 and 29 as well.
How we Do Business
We do business differently depending on what kind of policy we are selling. Unfortunately, the impounded car insurance market is a higher risk level than many of the other markets that we sell policies in. This changes how we are able to carry out business. We are not able to take payments for impounded car insurance policies via credit or debit cards. This is due to the high rate of historical fraud within the industry.
Instead, we take payments via a bank transfer. In doing this, we give both parties the security that a card payment cannot. Paying with a bank transfer means you get the re-assurance that we will only ever charge you the amount you are quoted, and that we cannot charge you any more without your knowledge or consent. Equally, we do not put ourselves at risk of claw-backs on payment (unwitting or not).
When you make a payment to us, give us a call, and we can confirm whether we have received the payment. If we have, we will go through all of your details with you, and make sure that they are correct. When we have confirmed your details, we will send your documents to your email address. While this depends on the speed of your email service, you should usually have your documents within 15 minutes.
Are There Any Other Costs?
The Impounded car insurance market might seem expensive to people who aren’t used to it. However, we do our utmost to make it as cheap as possible. While there is not much that we can do about the rates that insurers provide, we can help lower the price in some ways.
The prices that we quote you are always one off prices. That means that while we include the taxes and fees in our price, you won’t ever have to pay them more than once.
When you recover your car from the police impound, there are often external costs to pay, that we are unfortunately unable to do anything about. Most police impound lots charge their own fees for holding a vehicle. While our impounded car insurance policies are enough to drive your car on, the individual impounds have the right to charge you for the time and space your car has taken up.
What Happens Next?
After you have recovered your car from the police impound lot, you will be covered for the remainder of your 30 day policy. This is third party only cover, but it is enough to legally drive. After this ends, however, you might find it difficult to get the further insurance that you legally need. This is because there is a high chance that if the police impound your vehicle, you will also then receive a driving conviction later on.
Many standard motor insurers prefer not to cover people with driving convictions. However, we have the experience of the non-standard market that few other brokers can boast. The insurers that we work with are more than happy to quote on all sorts of driving convictions. We will get in touch with you towards the end of your impounded car insurance policy 30 day period. If you would like us to, we will then contact our panel of insurers. We will then see what kind of annual policies we would be able to find you.
Business You Can Trust
At Alternative, we have years of experience of the Impounded Car Insurance market. We make sure that we stay up to date in the industry, so that we can provide you the best service that we are able. We publish the reviews that our customers have been kind enough to leave us on our website. You can see there that the overwhelming majority of our customers have been impressed with the service and quality that we provide. At Alternative Insurance Brokers, we pride ourselves on being as honest and transparent as we are able. We want to sell insurance policies that you can trust, and feel confident in. Whatever has happened to your car, and whatever driving history you have, we can help.When your car, van or taxi is in the police impound, turn to Alternative Insurance Brokers for the cover that you need.