Emmis

Can anyone recommend a not so incredibly expensive insurer? Thank you!

cjfenech

Hi. I just moved here from Malta. I actually work in an insurance company in Palermo. If you wish you could send me your email address and I will ask someone here to contact you to give you a quote.

If you are encountering a language problem, you could always contact me directly at the office and I will try and facilitate getting you a quote.

chris120

Vehicle insurance is much more expensive in Italy than UK and in my experience you will struggle to get any NCB read across. Telephone quotations seem to be more economic than internet ones and 3rd party cover seems to be pretty well the same price who ever quotes.

CarrieW

When we moved over here we found it very difficult to arrange the insurance company to accept the NCB from our UK cars. We had a letters from the DVLA, stating the cars were no longer registered to us and proof of NCB from our previous insurers. As my husband and I had both sold our cars privately rather than through a dealer we were stumped when the insurer asked for a letter from the company we had sold our cars to, proving we had sold it to them! We evetually made them understand we could not provide this and they even took into account our NCB's! If you are still in the UK make sure you get those letters before you move over, just in case you are asked for them.

We are both now with Zurich insurance and used our local office but they also have an online branch called Zuritel - these would have been a bit cheaper but seeing as they were being so awkward we needed to deal with one person rather than a call centre, where you deal with anyone who answers your e-mail (or not as the case may be!).

Be prepaired that it will be a lot more expensive to insure your car over here though - my insurance is more than double what it was in the UK, for a less powerful car

duffer

Unfortunately I didn't think about getting my NCB certificate. I had 7 years no claims!

In the end we are using Genialloyd to insure 2 cars - you get extra discount this way. Everything was done on the internet but you have the bonus of a telephone line in case you would like to speak directly to someone. From my dealings I have found them to be reasonable especially if you are looking to take 'kasko' - kind of like comprehensive cover with cover for hail (which in the north of Italy can be dangerous - especially in the Verona area nearer the spring)

For bare bones cover Directline are very aggressive - they recently had a promotion offering extra 12% discount if you do it online. You save more by cutting out extras such as legal cover (you must do the paperwork for any claims yourself using their proforma letters) and roadside assistance.

BTW If you don't already know: if you buy a new car (certain conditions apply, i.e. 1.3lt or less and co2 emissions less than 140k etc) and you have an old banger there are many incentives to be had, i.e. €800 bonus from the Gov't and free disposal of the banger and no road tax (bollo) for 2 or 3 years. Some companies are also giving free insurance for 3yrs.

I don't know if it was relevant but I thought I'd add that to this topic

Emmis

Thank you for all the messages. Thanks also for preparing us. We'd heard it was expensive but wow... twice as much as the UK... that's a lot. After hearing how expensive it is to do most things in Italy I'm hoping we've made the right decision to drop everything, take a huge cut in pay and move over here! eek...

chris120

Emmis,
Some things are more expensive and some things are cheaper. Overall i reckon the cost of living UK v Italy is about the same.