“Car insurance sometimes hundreds of euros cheaper in the same neighborhood”

If you live in a place where few cars are stolen or damaged, chances are that you will pay less for car insurance than in a place where cars burn more often than streetlights. Not illogical, after all, insurers estimate how high the risk is that you will call on them. Geld.nl investigated the levels at which there are differences and discovered that within the same residential area or even in a street, it can already differ considerably what you pay.

They picked a number of random residential areas in the Netherlands and sometimes saw hundreds of euros difference in premiums in the same residential area on an annual basis. All risk insurance is assumed for a 2019 Kia Niro with a 35-year-old driver with five claim-free years. With 482 premium calculations for 37 addresses at 20 different car insurers, there is an average of about €21 difference in the annual premiums within the same residential areas, but there are outliers up to €400 on an annual basis. One insurer is not the other; those who move house receive a higher premium for one than before and a lower premium for the other. “When you move, always compare your car insurance again to make sure whether your current car insurance policy at the new address still has the cheapest offer,” says Amanda Bulthuis of Geld.nl.

Insurer ASR explains to the comparison site why there are sometimes already different premiums at a very local level: “We not only look at the urbanization (degree of urbanization, traffic density) per postcode/region, but also at other socio-demographic and economic characteristics. As a result, the premiums can still differ from each other within a location.” Unigarant adds: “A residential area is not homogeneous. You have areas where, for example, there are many senior housing, single-family homes or villas. Each of these segments has its own characteristics. These characteristics are taken into account in the premium calculation together with other factors such as car brand and the age of the driver. All these factors together form the final premium.”