Do personalised number plates affect insurance?

If you have considered adding a personalised number plate to your vehicle you may be wondering how that affects your insurance. By law drivers in the UK must obtain vehicle insurance to protect themselves and other road users from costs arising from accidents, or to pay compensation in the event of theft.

Most insurance providers offer different levels of protection to shield drivers from harm, but there are many factors that can affect monthly premiums and drive the cost of insurance up. The good news is that in most cases adding private registration plates to your car or motorbike will not affect the price of your insurance policy. 

There are three rules to bear in mind: 

1. Any private plate added to your vehicle must be declared to the insurance company. Failure to do so will void your policy.
2. When changing personalised plates to another vehicle you must always pay the transfer fee a submit the necessary DVLA paperwork for the registration transfer.
3. While private plates should not affect the cost of your insurance, you may need to pay an admin fee to your insurance provider to make the change.

Occasionally you may find an insurance company that wants to increase the cost of your cover after you add a cool private number plate. This is usually based on the logic that the cost of the private plate increases the value of the vehicle, making it more desirable. If this is the case it can be worth challenging the fee as the modification is not altering the performance of the vehicles. At the very least it is worth shopping around among other insurers. 

Sometimes insurance companies may view adding a personalised number plate to your vehicle as a benefit; making the vehicle more easily identifiable in the event of theft, this, however, does not translate to a reduction in your insurance premium. 

Drivers have the choice of using many private plates for their vehicle, from budget plates to extremely expensive options, the number of private registration available are plentiful. A search on Swiftreg will reveal many available plates to suit a wide range of budgets. Using different plate formats can make a big difference in price with current style number plates generally costing less than the dateless style of registration. 

If you happen to have a plate that has cost thousands of pounds then it may be wise to include it under your insurance coverage. This will protect you should your car get stolen and the private plates lost along with the vehicle. 

Obtaining insurance for private registration plates in this way is not a common practice and there are only a limited number of insurers that will offer it as an option. But if your plates are costly, it’s worth checking with your provider to see if they will include your private plates as part of the insurance policy.