We publish 2 types of score:
- Finder’s expert score. Our experts analyse a range of features for every comprehensive insurance policy on our site. We use this analysis to create our expert star ratings, shown in blue, and to determine our top picks.
- User reviews. We ask you to tell us about your experience as a customer of the brands we cover. You can submit a comment directly through the relevant review, and each year we gather more user reviews through a customer survey. We show the results of this survey in an annual league table, and use it to determine our annual customer satisfaction awards, too.
Finder’s expert score
Our team of researchers give each comprehensive policy an overall rating 1 out of 5 stars.
★★★★★ – Excellent
★★★★★ – Good
★★★★★ – Average
★★★★★ – Subpar
★★★★★ – Poor
Quick stats
- Car insurance policies we analyse: 33
- Features analysed for each one: 29
What factors do we take into account?
We base our ratings on 3 main factors:
- Range of features included. Is a courtesy car covered as standard? Is your no-claims discount protected in the unfortunate event of a claim? Are you able to pay monthly, and does it cost extra to do that? We look at all this, and more.
- Level of cover. With any car insurance policy, it’s important to understand the level of cover you’re entitled to in the unfortunate event of a claim. We look at these cover limits in detail across a wide range of specific criteria.
- Customer satisfaction and service. How likely are customers to recommend the provider to a friend? How easy is it to manage your policy online? Are claims lines open 24/7? These are the types of questions we’ve looked into in great detail.
Shouldn’t the cost of car insurance be a factor?
There’s no getting around the fact that cost can play a big role in choosing your car insurance. However, there’s also a number of other factors that come into play when deciding which provider is the “best”.
With our policy ratings, we’ve removed cost from the equation and taken a more holistic approach to car insurance and focused more on the quality of service, the level of cover and specific policy inclusions and exclusions.
How do we decide which features are more important?
Each factor in our scoring methodology is weighted.
Our experts base this on user and market research to ensure it reflects what’s important to you.
For instance, whether the car insurance provider has windscreen cover included as standard is less important than whether or not it’s extremely difficult to make a claim in your time of need.
How do we choose our “best” car insurance providers?
Finder top picks highlight providers that our analysis shows are the best fit for specific categories and are displayed across our car insurance content. Be sure to consider your own personal objectives, needs and circumstances before making a decision using our top picks.
We chose these from the providers on our site, using the methodology below:
What are we looking for in our “best for” categories?
Your reviews and our customer survey
You can see review stars at the top of our review pages, if we’ve received more than 10. These are from consumers just like you who use our site and want to review the products and providers they use. We include responses we’ve received in our annual customer satisfaction surveys. We also show the results of each survey in a league table in guides and in our awards pages.
In December 2023, we ran a customer satisfaction survey on car insurance. 750 people answered and told us how happy they are with their insurer. We’ve turned their answers into a star rating of between 1 and 5 and we show this in our annual league table in our guide to the best car insurance.
★★★★★ – Excellent
★★★★★ – Good
★★★★★ – Average
★★★★★ – Subpar
★★★★★ – Poor
Customer satisfaction score methodology
The survey asked respondents how satisfied they are with their current account on a scale from 1 to 5, and also whether they would recommend it to a friend or not.
We turned the answers into an overall star rating that takes into account:
- How many people would recommend the account vs how many people wouldn’t. If you say you’d recommend your bank to a friend when sitting at the pub in front of a pint, it must mean it’s really good. This forms 50% of our customer satisfaction rating.
- How many people rated a provider five out of five. Wow, five out of five? This counts for 25% of our customer satisfaction rating.
- The average score each current account provider got. This tells us if a company offers quite a solid service even though it doesn’t have loads of top ratings… or if it’s just not that great. This parameter forms the last 25% of our overall customer satisfaction score.
Does Finder compare all car insurance providers in the market?
We already list most of the UK’s popular and well-regarded car insurance providers and we’re adding more all the time.
We’d love to hear from you if there’s a provider you’d like to see us review and score.
Cheapest car insurance
To help you find the cheapest car insurance provider, our team have analysed a number of provider policy quotes across a range of different categories. We use this analysis to formulate our table data that you may see across the website.
Cheapest provider overall
To find the cheapest overall, we ran the same driver and vehicle profile over 3 different locations a number of times through provider quote engines and took a final average. With our driver and vehicle profile, we’ve tried to be representative of an individual in the UK with moderate driving experience, and moderate mileage and an average socioeconomic background.
In terms of locations, we’ve taken into account three different post codes with varying average costs across the UK. Our research suggests SE1 is one of the most expensive locations, NE1 represents an average cost location and TD1 represents one of the cheapest locations. Updated: Oct 2019 (source: Quotezone)
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