The best car insurer

We show you the few car insurers that give you the cover you really want, and the insurance policy that has it all.

Financial research company Defaqto recently produced research for motor insurers. They were good enough to give me their raw data, which means I can tell you precisely which insurers offer the cover you're looking for.

Defaqto asked 5,000 customers what they want from their motor insurance. Here are our top five wants:

The list of top five features we want

(Henceforth referred to as the list)

1. Not losing our no claims bonuses and not being liable for higher premiums if the damage is not our fault. (Many insurers offer the former but few the latter.)

2. No policy excess applied if we're involved in an accident caused by an uninsured driver.

3. Protection of our no claims bonuses regardless of the number of accidents.

4. Protection of no claims bonus for up to a maximum of one claim per year (which was presumably voted by customers as an alternative to three, as it will keep premiums down.)

5. No excess applied following a total loss or if the vehicle is stolen and not recovered.

Just 54 out of 244 policies offer at least one of those. No policies offer all five, which is impossible because numbers three and four are conflicting. Hence, the top mark for a policy is 4/4. Just one insurer manages to do this, which I shall reveal to you shortly.

Which policies offer number one in the list?

If you have a non-fault claim, most insurers allow you to keep your no claims bonus. However, 238 out of 244 policies will increase your premium the year after you make a claim for an accident that was not your fault.

In other words, only six policies exist which don’t charge you more when the claim is the other party's fault. The reason for this seemingly unfair approach is because insurers have found that, if you have an accident, regardless of fault, you're more likely to have accidents in the future. Hence, with 98% of policies your premium will rise the following year after a non-fault claim, albeit usually by a small amount.

Here are the six exceptions:

Most car insurers have many policies, e.g. Aviva has 15+. Ensure you choose carefully.

Look at the last column for the one policy with top marks: Zurich's Private Clients policy offers, in addition to number one in the list, numbers two, three and five. That's 4/4.

Number two

Just 29 out of 244 policies offer number two in the list. To remind you what number two was: you don't have to pay the excess if the other party was uninsured and caused the accident.

The policies that offer this are:

*Varies per policyholder

Number three

Number three in the list was: protection of our no claims bonuses regardless of the number of accidents.

Just 12 policies protect your no claims bonus regardless of whether you have one or 50 claims in the year. (If you have too many claims you will still lose your protection next year, but not your bonus.) Here they are:

Astoundingly, just Zurich Private Clients offers other features from the list.

Number four

There are 44 more policies offering standard protection benefits. This means you get to keep your full bonus if you have no more than one claim per year, or if you have no more than two claims in three years. These are easy enough to spot in car insurance comparison searches, so I won't list them here.

Number five

Policies that don't charge an excess if your car is is written off or stolen and not recovered are rare. Here are the eight policies that offer this:

Please read the policy small print carefully, particularly because with a big piece of research like this it's likely that Defaqto has made a few mistakes. Nothing against Defaqto – that's just normal.

I don't know what restrictions there are with these policies, so you'll need to do a little research yourself. From the name of Chartis's policy, for example, it's probably for company deals. A good starting point would be to compare prices online and look for the policies that are listed in this article.

More car insurance help

You can easily compare not just prices but the main features of the small print when you compare car insurance through us.

Read Cheaper car insurance in 10 steps.