Can you insure the same car twice?

Being a driver means you have to keep an active car insurance policy. You legally need at least third-party car insurance to protect other drivers if you have an accident. And when it’s time to renew your insurance, your policy might automatically renew. This makes sure you always have an active policy, so you’re not driving illegally.

But if you didn’t realise this, you could take out another car insurance policy. This means you’d insure the same car twice. Is there any benefit to doing this and is it even legal? Let’s find out the rules around doubling up on your car insurance.

Can you legally do this?

Don’t worry – you can legally have more than one car insurance policy for the same car – there’s nothing to stop you doing it. And if you take out a second car insurance policy when you already have one, it won’t mean the first policy is void.

It’s also possible you could do this if you didn’t realise you had car insurance or you forgot about it. If you got car insurance free when you bought a new car or it came as part of a packaged account, this might slip your mind and you could take out another policy.

Make sure to check this whenever you come to take out car insurance. If you’re already covered, there’s really no reason why you’d need to take out another policy. It would just mean you’d shell out more money than you’d need to.

Why you shouldn’t do it

As we mentioned above, even though you can take out more than one car insurance policy for the same car, there’s not any benefit of doing this. It doesn’t mean you’ll have twice as much cover or double the protection. In fact, it can make things more complicated if you need to claim.

If you have an accident and try to claim on one insurance policy, your insurer might ask the other insurer to contribute to your payout. This can be problematic if both insurers disagree on how much they need to pay.

Insuring the same car twice means you’re paying out twice for something you only need to pay for once. This is the main reason why it’s not a good idea – it’s just a waste of money.

It also means you’d lose your no claims bonus on both policies. And you couldn’t try and claim for the full amount of the damages from both insurers – this is fraud.

And in fact, if you’re looking to save money, it’s worth checking whether you’ve already got cover any time you take out an insurance policy. Check out our blog to see how you can find out if you’ve already got gadget or travel insurance.