The most basic kind of car insurance that you can get is third party insurance. This covers you in the event of any damage caused to a third party or their property; a car that you crash into, for example.
Third party insurance will not cover you against damage to your own vehicle though, and so you may want to opt for a higher level of cover, depending on what you think you’ll need.
In This Guide:
- What will third party insurance cover me for?
- What alternative levels of cover are available?
- Is third party insurance good value for money?
- How to get cheap third party car insurance
What will third party insurance cover me for?
If you take out a third party insurance policy, you’ll be covered against any damage you cause to anyone else or their property, including your passengers.
So if you crash into someone else’s car, or drive into someone’s garden wall, the costs of repairs will be paid out by your insurer.
The same goes for any injuries caused to your passengers, or any accidents caused by your passengers.
What will be missing from a basic third party car insurance policy, though, will be cover against any damage to or theft of your own vehicle.
What alternative levels of cover are available?
If you think that basic third party cover isn’t quite enough cover for you, then you might want to opt for the next level up – third party, fire and theft (TPFT) insurance. This will give you all of the basic third party cover, as well as cover for your own vehicle against fire damage and theft, including any damage caused in the event of a theft (or attempted theft).
If you want more than this still, you can go for fully comprehensive cover, which is the highest level of cover available – though the actual specifics of each fully comprehensive policy will vary slightly from provider to provider.
Is third party insurance good value for money?
As a general rule, given that basic third party insurance offers the minimum cover possible, such policies tend to be the cheapest car insurance on the market.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you are getting good value; you may find that if you go for a policy offering more cover, you actually get more for your money.
This is because statistically speaking, drivers with only third party cover actually tend to be involved in more accidents, or at least make more claims, than those with, say, a fully comprehensive policy. This leads insurers to bump up the premiums to account for the increased number of pay-outs being made.
How to get cheap third party car insurance
One of the best ways to keep your premiums low is to build up a good no claims discount by driving carefully and safely over time. This can take a while though, of course, the longer the better, but the discounts you get are often very large.
We found that customers applying for third-party only cover tended to have accrued less of a no claims bonus than customers applying for more comprehensive cover. This correlated with higher premium costs on average:
Third party-only: 5 years NCB average
Fully comprehensive: 9 years NCB average
Third-party, fire and theft: 7 years NCB average
Whether or not you have a no claims discount built up, if you want to make sure you get the cheapest third party cover available, you’ll need to shop around online. By using our third party car insurance comparison service, you can do just this with little effort and lots of reward. Just let us know what kind of policy you’re after, and we’ll bring you up a list of the best car insurance quotes on the market that meet your requirements.