This article answers the question, How do I cancel my motor insurance?
Whether you’ve declared your car as SORN, sold your motor/car, or have simply renewed your motor/car insurance early elsewhere, you’ll need to cancel your existing policy.
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I don’t want my policy to renew, but I can’t get through to my insurer. What should I do?
During the COVID-19 pandemic, you may find you can’t contact your insurer on the phone because of long wait times.
How do I cancel my motor insurance?
If this happens, you can email the insurance company, confirming that you don’t want the policy to renew. This should be enough to cancel the policy before the renewal date. Bear in mind that only the policyholder is able to cancel insurance policies.
You can find your insurer’s email address on their website. In your email, it’ll help to include:
- your policy number and renewal date
- the policyholder’s name, date of birth and postcode
- your car’s reg
It might also help if you add in a reason for cancellation, and mention that you weren’t able to get through over the phone.
Make sure you have valid insurance in place to cover you after the renewal date.
Cancelling because your car is declared as SORN
If you’re keeping your car, but won’t be driving it for the foreseeable future (e.g. it’s an older car that needs a lot of work), you can register it as SORN with the DVLA. When you do that, you have two choices, you can either cancel your current insurance policy with immediate effect, or keep it.
Why would you keep it? Well, you may want to keep it to cover the cost of replacing it should it catch on fire, or if it’s stolen. If you choose to keep the policy, you’ll also be earning no claims bonus.
Want to go ahead and SORN your vehicle? Fill out the government SORN form.
How to cancel your car insurance
Cancelling your car insurance is generally a simple process. Depending on who you’re insured with, you might be able to cancel it online, which is the easiest way to do it. However, lots of insurance companies want to speak to the policy holder to cancel, if that’s the case, you’ll need to:
- Get your policy documents to hand so you have your policy number
- Call your insurance company (it’ll need to be the policy holder that does this)
- Tell them you’re cancelling your car insurance (they may ask why, that’s fine)
- They’ll explain any fees and might ask you to send your certificate of motor insurance back to them (they’ll explain how to do this)
- If you’re declaring your car as SORN, make sure you fill in the SORN form with the DVLA
Cancelling because you’ve sold your car and aren’t replacing it
Possibly the simplest reason to cancel your car insurance is because you no longer own it.
Simply call up the company your car insurance is with, tell them you no longer own the car and want it to be cancelled. They’ll send you a copy (whether paper or via email) of your no claims bonus (NCB), which stays valid for two years.
After two years, you’ll lose however many years you had built up. Make sure you keep your NCB proof somewhere safe, as the next company you take out insurance with is likely to want to see a copy of it for proof.
However, if you’re selling your car and buying a new one, you don’t necessarily need to cancel your old policy.
You should be able to either call up your car insurance provider, or if they’re online only, log in and change your car to your new one.
The premium could go up or down for the remaining term of the policy, depending on the risk of the new car.
If the premium increases a lot, you’ll need to take into consideration the potential cancellation fees and loss of NCB as part of the cost of changing cars.