Is it REALLY that easy to get car insurance in Poland ?

A Polish friend of mine was comparing car insurance procedures in Poland with that of the UK's.

She said that in Poland it was much easier. In Poland ,the insurance company doesn't charge a premium for younger drivers or attach any significance to the geo-location of the policy holder. I told her I found that hard to believe as the insurance business is all about calculating risk and there should be a number of factors that dictates how much you pay.

Is it really that easy in Poland ?

They do ask the age (PESEL) and address of the car, but there certainly aren't that many probing questions about whether the car is on the street or in a garage.

One of the issues that makes it easier here is that you insure the car, not the driver, so anyone can drive your vehicle if it has an insurance policy, which means charging thousands for a teenager is pointless, since teens in Poland don't have any money for a car anyway.

It does work out a hell of a lot cheaper here. I'm not young any more, and my record is clean, but my car insurance is 900zl over here, compared to 900pounds in the UK for exactly the same car.

900 PLN your car must be worth about 20,000 PLN if you have OC/AC

Of course they do!


Of course they take it into consideration.
Your friend either never insured a car or knows nothing about the process (hard to believe).


... and tons of other information.

It's not even worth 10% of that, it's a 23 year old BMW. But insurance for that in England would still be very high, because it's got a very polluting engine, it's a BMW, and it was very popular with drug dealers in the Eighties.


They do ask a lot, but not in comparison to the English interrogation, that's all. If you've not got any points or had any accidents, getting insurance in Poland is a very quick process

Things must have changed a lot since 2003 (ever since then I've just renewed my existing policy, after checking with a friend's brother who is an insurance agent).

Yes, renewal is easier. If nothing changed it's fast and simple, but at first you had to provide details...

Not really. It was age and address and value of car (and I think maybe how long I'd been driving). I remember that I had a student who had a Subaru WRX (and a seriously souped up one) who had twice lost his licence (once for speeding and once for drink driving) and had had several accidents. I at that time had a completely clean licence and had had one accident (17 years previously). We were both paying 4.8% of the value of our cars for our insurance. For a laugh I got a quote for my grandmother (clean licence and not an accident in 50 years' driving) driving a 2003 Skoda Fabia Classic (i.e. what would be group one in UK): the quote was 4.8%

So which one is it then ? Richfilth said they only insure the car not the driver so how can there be a premium for younger drivers ? I'm confused now.

The details the insurance companies ask are about the "main driver" or owner. In Poland, this is normally the head of the household, the father or grandfather, who sits on his money and buys his kids the things they need when they need them. There is no way an 18 year old can afford his own car in Poland, so daddy buys him a new Fiat 500 Abarth, puts his own details in the insurance form (which is perfectly legal) and gives the keys to his inexperienced offspring.

This is fine when the car is a maluch or a battered old Polonez, but the number of kids in the big cities with overpowered hatchbacks is on the rise, and with Poland's road death rate already the highest in Europe, the insurance companies won't take long to change their system. But for now there's too many poor people in villages who own a car together (you can co-own cars in Poland) for the insurance companies to charge them all per driver.

I'm sorry I'm making it so confusing, but that's what Poland's like.

I doesn't true. I'm over 28 years old threshold, driving my cars for 21 years without any claim and OC is 300zł (about 60 pounds) per year. The same car for person under 21 y.o. and OC rise to 1200zł (about 240 pounds) per year.

Peter, is that because you're old, or because you have such a long insurance history?

You need to compare a 20-year-old with no years of driving, to a 30-year-old with no years of driving. Saying you've driving for 21 years with no accidents will, of course, reduce your policy.

Isn't OC for drivers under 28y.o. still more expensive?

I didn't notice a big cut in my insurance when I turned 28.

You get a 10% discount every year (same as English No Claims Bonus), but apart from that I think the under-28 clause is negligible.

I think the general idea is that you can only accumulate so many discounts, otherwise people in their 40s would have policies for peanuts.