Choosing Your Motorbike Insurance Policy

Motorbike or motorcycle insurance is something you legally have to have if you are riding a motorbike on a public road. Alternatively you obviously need moped insurance or scooter insurance if riding a scooter or moped!

The process of getting motorbike insurance is seldom fun and can be a bit of a chore, but the way to make it more rewarding is by thinking that if you put in a bit of effort and do it properly, the right motorcycle insurance policy will save you a stack of cash.

Getting a Quote

You will need to start by deciding which providers of motorbike insurance you will get a quote from, how you will find them and how many bike insurance quotes you are going to get. Generally around half a dozen motorcycle insurance quotes should be enough, and the other decision you need to make is do you use the internet or the telephone (or both).

The most popular way of obtaining the quotes is to use the web to get quotes initially and then follow up with a phone call to the two or three bike insurance quotes you favour. The web is also a good way of choosing who to contact in the first place; simply google / motorbike insurance / bike insurance / motorcycle insurance / moped insurance / scooter insurance, or another search engine of your choice, and you will have no end of bike insurance providers to click through to.

Click through to about six in turn (the exact figure you choose is up to you). The boring bit is you will have to fill different motorcycle insurance quote forms in each time, asking the same information.

Remember to be prepared and have any information you need to hand as in order to provide you with an accurate motorbike insurance quote various items are required - details of any convictions you have, any accidents or claims, how much no claims bonus etc etc. All of these things affect motorbike insurance premiums but can be found on your driving licence or existing policy documents.

What's included in the motorcycle insurance quote - other benefits.

Once you have got the number of quotes, make a short list of, say, three, providers to call but you need to decide how you are going to choose them. Besides choosing on price you need to take into account that different bike insurance quotes may or may not include extras. Examples are 'riding other bikes', enabling you to ride your mate's bike, breakdown cover, legal assistance cover and whether you have equivalent cover to ride abroad. Some motorbike insurance providers include these as standard, others offer them as optional extras.

Type of cover and excess

You will need to make a choice as to what type of cover you want. Comprehensive is not always as expensive as you might expect but can come with a high excess. Third Party Fire and Theft is worth considering if your bike is a few years old and Third Party Only if it is worth less than 1000 pounds as the excess starts to become a significant proportion of the bike's value.

The excess is the amount deducted from the payment of any claim that you make - it is the amount that you have to pay.

Calling the Provider

So you have your shortlist. You now need to confirm all the details of your motorbike insurance quote over the phone with them, both the cost and what benefits are included in the price; occasionally the price given over the internet mysteriously increases when you ring through.

Choosing your Motorcycle Insurance Provider

Having confirmed all the details and spoken to all on your shortlist you now need to make a final choice.

The most sensible criteria to use are:

(i) Price (obviously!)
(ii) What benefits are included
(iii) How they came across when you spoke to them? How experienced/professional did they come across and what sort of attitude did they have? Did they inspire confidence?

Clearly how you weigh up these three criteria is up to you, as is the final decision!

Conclusion

Finding a motorbike insurance provider is an important though unfortunately an unexciting task. If you apply a method to it as described above then you can be confident that you have done it properly and made an informed and correct choice.