How does no claims bonus work for named drivers?

It doesn't matter how long you've been driving without any claims if you happen to be a named driver as only the policyholder (main driver) accumulates no claims bonus (NCB) and the named driver does not get anything. It is only now that insurance companies have started to give a certain NCB to named drivers only if they were to take a policy of their own with the same company they have been insured with. This is just an attempt to retain customers and the NCB that you get as a named driver is still not the same as that for the policyholder (it is less and cannot be transferred to another insurance company).

You should contact the insurance company with which you had a policy as a named driver before and see how much discount they would give you as they will know your driving history and will therefore be able to provide you with a better quote. If that's still too much to pay, then you will have to go to a car insurance comparison site and see whether you're getting cheaper quotes there.

[Migrated from previous post 996 dated 07 Jun 2010]

Yes, you can get named driver no claims bonus with certain companies like Direct Line. Not all car insurance companies allow named driver to earn no claims bonus and those which do will give a discount to the named driver only when the latter takes out a policy of their own with them and only them. There are two things which you need to remember with named driver discount. First you only get the discount when you as a named driver take out a policy in your name with the same insurance company with which you've earned the no claims bonus and second is that the discount that you earn is not the same as the discount that you would have earned as the policyholder (it is usually less). Therefore if you were with insurance company A and have got 2 years no claims discount with them, you cannot use the discount if you decide to go with company B. It can only be used with company A, that is, it is not transferrable.

[Migrated from previous post 942 dated 18 May 2010]

Have you tried contacting your current insurance company? You are most likely to get a better deal with them. As far as named driver no claims discount is concerned, you probably know that different companies will not count the clean driving record of additional drivers on a policy. However there are some which will give you a discount but you will have to call them rather than trying to get an online quote to see how much discount they are willing to offer.

[Migrated from previous post 1194 dated 22 Aug 2010]