As an insurance broker (please don't shoot the messenger, we have enough with the FSA - and I don't personally deal with personal insurances) my advice would be to arrange your insurance so that it falls due in the last week/last few days of the month.
By then if targets have not been reached some brokers/insurers will be getting a bit desperate.
It's becoming tiresome having this constant Dutch auction pitting one insurer against the other; contrary to popular belief the average earnings of a broker handling commercial insurances is round about 15% across the portfolio. The more motor fleet oriented the account, the lower our earnings as the commission rate for 'us' on that class is only 10%. The more we work to reduce the premium the lower our earnings are. We just have to hope that all our clients are experiencing exceptional growth so that the premium grows back to what it was last year, by organic means!
And like everyone else, I expect a pay rise every year and all that jazz.
The direct sales people and some of the specialists get obscene levels of commission but then they do all the policy issue as well, and are able to employ less experienced (= cheaper) staff as the subject matter is not usually very technical and they are only dealing with one class of business instead of all of them! (We have to know about things like contract and employment law, sprinkler systems, intruder alarms etc etc as well as the differences in all the insurers policy conditions and how to type LOL.) Anyway - the commission level enables them to be able to discount much more heavily, so that's good for us as private clients.
Funnily enough we moved our car insurance from the Co-op (where it had been for about a million years) to the brokers Direct Choice this year, as we have had such good service/value from them on the bikes and who were considerably cheaper for the cars. This started from a half hearted on-line quotation we did on one of the bikes which we hadn't followed up; they did (by telephone) a few days later and in the course of the conversation Pete discovered they would do a multi-bike policy and give full NCD on both bikes although we had only owned the Blackbird for 12 months and others had told him he needed full NCD to be able to have 2 bikes on one policy. The chap who rang was both knowledgeable and extremely helpful. They have saved us shed loads!
Everyone's circumstances are different so don't expect the same deal with the same insurer as anyone else says they have got. However, rates are still dropping across the board, so definitely don't accept the first offer you get!
Jenny
