Cycling UK Forum

can anyone give me recommendations for bike insurance? i have a Trek 7.5 FX. worth £500

Household contents. The Co-op are cheap and they pay up.

My impression of claiming on household insurance is that it puts your premiums up the following year, wrecks your insurance history and loses you your no claims discount. This is in addition to the fact that the insurance company is unlikely to pay up unless your bike was locked (possibly to a fixed object and therefore less likely to be stolen anyway) and will want an excess, possibly £100. For a bike worth £500 now and less by the time it is stolen (unless "new for old") household insurance isn't looking good. Bike insurance on its own is probably a sick joke.

My take on this is that something worth £500 isn't worth insuring - you would never take out comprehensive insurance on a £500 car. A far better way to "insure" it in my view is to put aside £50 per year for its replacement. This way you will get the benefit of looking after it, not the insurance company. Even better, share the arrangement with family or friends and do your own insurance. People often make the mistake of insuring separate items - you insure yourself simply by balancing a good year on TV theft, vet fees and a stay in a Spanish hospital against the loss of the bike. And by the way, in the absence of being able to assess you personally, your premium will be based on all those people who are more careless, less honest and less sober than yourself.

Insurance works best for rare but catastrophic loss - liability, fire, flooding (rare??), motoring, death etc. Insuring a bike gives you a small but very expensive compensation for what is essentially a sentimental loss.

Despite all that Horizon, I still insure mine every year. i do it through CTC with Butterworth Insurance Services. Look on the CTC website.

Make sure that your insurance covers any damage you may cause to a third party, such as a pedestrian or stationary car.

Not being one not to back up my opinions without hard facts, ( ) I went to Butterworth's and got a quote on-line. Despite everything I said above I was still surprised. My age and post code gave me a reduced quote of £49 a year for a £600 bike. The bike has to be kept secure, locked, not left outside at night etc etc etc...

Now lets assume it gets pinched in the first week:

Cost of insurance: £49.00
Cost of new policy: £49.00 (the original one is automatically cancelled and it will be more than this).
Excess 10%: £60.00

Now lets assume that it gets pinched after three years:

Cost of insurance: £147.00
Cost of new policy: £49.00 (it will be more than this)
Excess 10%: £60

You will receive £540 less policy costs of £196 = £344.

There are knock on effects on any other insurance you take out as well of course on this bicycle insurance which will change the figures above for the worse. There may of course be different configurations for cheaper bikes, more family bikes etc but the benefit appears to be marginal. I don't blame Butterworths - bike theft is common and nor do I blame people for taking it out as there is some benefit. But the stipulations mean that benefit of all the precautions you take to avoid it being stolen accrue to the insurer.

An alternative idea would be to buy £50 worth of premium bonds every year. That's £500 after ten years and a reasonable chance of the odd cash prize. I don't think I have made a totally convincing case for not taking out insurance but I think it is worth judging carefully what you actually gain by it.

I got another quote based on a London postcode (and slightly younger age) of £64 per year. Once again, I don't blame Butterworth's, it is in the nature of insuring a single, low value, high risk item. The risk is probably worth carrying yourself as it isn't open ended.