In recent years the UK insurance market has seen a prolific number of car insurance on line companies rise.
This has led to good things for the consumer, because there really are a great number of choices now when looking for car insurance.
With the high prices of car insurance, which are continually rising, the market needs strong competition.
Searching for car insurance on line is a quick and convenient way to shop around for the best prices.
Many of us are quite lazy or apathetic and rather just stick to our current insurance company regardless of the premiums we are paying.
That's better than the hassle, we say.
But, now with car insurance found easily online, the hassle has certainly been minimised.
You don't need to pick up the phone and you certainly don't even need to leave the home.
While a search engine like Google or Yahoo! will produce hundreds of results when searching for car insurance online, the fact of the matter is that this is incredibly overwhelming.
To combat this, many price comparison websites have been set up, providing the consumer with the service of finding the best price for them automatically.
Beware, though, not all price comparison sites are what they seem - some are paid by certain insurance companies to give them favourable comparisons.
For this reason you need to use a few sites and narrow down your options of insurance companies.
Specialist brokers have now also launched on line services which conduct similar searches to the price comparison sites.
It's a great idea to check them out too and see if they can get you a good deal.
Many of them will also search online for car insurance and the extra help will certainly be beneficial.
Before approaching a broker or searching for car insurance on line, it's a good idea to first have an idea of what kind of insurance you need.
You don't want to be sold an insurance that doesn't suit your needs, or that provides more than you need.
The three main types of insurance sold by car insurance companies in the UK are Fully Comprehensive (Fully comp.
), Third Party Fire & Theft (TPFT) and Third Party Only (TPO).
UK laws require all vehicles on the road to be insured, and the minimum insurance that adequately covers all the stipulations of the law is TPO.
If you have an accident and would like the damages to your vehicle and the other vehicle to be paid for, as well as the medical costs for passengers and drivers; and you're looking for car insurance that will cover the car in case of theft, hail damage, fire damage and other kinds of damage; then you need to be taking a look at Fully Comp.
Insurance.
How much the policy covers in detail varies from policy to policy, but this gives you an idea of the kind of coverage you would get.
If you're not too worried about your own car but want to, at least, cover the damages done to the other vehicle (in the event of an accident) as well as the medical costs of other passengers and drivers; plus, you want the car covered in case it's stolen or suffers natural damages; then you need to be looking at TPFT.
The only difference between this type of policy and TPO, broadly speaking, is that TPO does not cover theft or other types of damage.