Bike Insurance from The Bike Insurer

So it's Oulton Park's turn to host the British Superbike Championship this weekend, the 2-4th May.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Oulton Park race circuit, its a brilliant track which is thought by many to be one of the finest, if not the finest track for racing bikes in the UK. In fact, Oulton Park was voted as being the best race track in the UK by fans of the BSB championship in 2007.

My personal favourite part of the circuit is the Knickerbrook section of the circuit, where things can get really lively!

Favourite this weekend is probably Leon Camier, who after having scored a win and a 2nd in the previous meeting at Brands Hatch, will be full of confidence as he travels north. Camier, who rides for the Airwaves Yamaha team, currently lies second in the championship behind early leader Sylvain Guintoli.

Oulton Park circuit is in the village of Little Budworth in Cheshire. Its about 13 miles from Chester and 17 miles from Warrington. If you are travelling from the M6 then you are best to take the exit at Junction 18 and follow the A54. Oulton Park race circuit will be signposted from there. Dont even think about getting that train from London this weekend as those clowns at Virgin Trains have works on the line all weekend because they believe that nobody travels over the bank holiday weekend.

Article by Dan

Permalink

 

Martin Lewis, the man behind the brilliant Money Saving Expert website is officially famous after it was announced that he was the 'most searched for personality in the UK' in the 12 weeks leading upto Jan 3rd 2009.

Hitwise, who provide insights on UK internet usage, show that there were even more searches for Martin Lewis in this period than the then President elect Barack Obama (Martin Lewis got 11% more searches than Barack Obama).

We love Martin Lewis at The Bike Insurer and believe he and his team do a brilliant job of showing the public the best ways to get the best deals on everything from Bike Insurance to holidays, to utilities to mobile phones.

You can often catch Martin Lewis in the media, whether it be on tv or in the paper and these appearances, coupled with the weekly email broadcast to his millions of subscribers have helped his Money Saving Expert website get into the top 100 visited websites in the UK, as well as now being ranked in the top 10 social networking websites.

Just in case you are not familiar with Martin Lewis or his Money Saving Expert website, he is the absolute guru showing you how to get the best deal on virtually everything. His online forums have thousands of users every day, people like you who tell others what deals they got and from where. Just check out these stats from March;

7.17 million visitors

66.25 million page impressions

3.4 million people choose to recieve the weekly Money Saving Expert email

The above figure grows by over 1000 people on average per day!!

We all use Martin Lewis and we think you should too if you want to save cash!!!

Article by Dan

Permalink

 

Each month we look at the average cost of bike insurance premiums just to keep an eye on whats going on in the UK bike marketplace.

In February 2008 the average bike insurance price as quoted on The Bike Insurer was £181.08 but in March 2008 this figure rose to £186.18, an increase of nearly 3%. This might not sound much but its the first increase we've seen for well over 18 months and is in line with what the experts have been predicting will happen for a while.

There may be some distortion with this increase as at the same time the average age of a rider in the UK dropped from 32 to 31 which may explain things as bike insurance is still partially rated on the age of the rider and there will be a small discount given usually to a rider thats 32 compared to 31.

We will keep an eye on the average bike insurance premium next month and will let you know if the premiums have gone up again or, as we hope, reduced,

Article by Dan.

Permalink

 

Bike insurance from The Bike Insurer

You've probably seen the Compare the Market tv ad which is currently running.

We like this ad, and take our hat off to the creativity that the producers of the ad showed - its very different and very memorable.

But we cant help wondering if they named the Meerkat after Alex Stone, the genius brain behind The Bike Insurer. You see, Compare the Market have called their Meerkat Aleksandr, which is of course abbreviated to Alex.

When we asked Alex if he would be happy to have a meerkat named after him he offered to drive to the Peterborough offices of Compare the Market, dress up in a meerkat costume and sign autographs for all those people that are fixated with him.

So, Compare the Market, would you like Alex to do this and if you ask nicely, maybe he will have his picture taken with you too!

Article by Dan

Permalink

 

We are really pleased to announce that we have now launched our sister bike insurance price comparison site www.thebikeinsurer.tv

www.thebikeinsurer.tv is the brand that you will see sponsoring the motorcycle racing events on the Eurosport channel These races include both the live and highlighted coverage of the Moto GP, World Superbike and British Superbike Championships.

When you get a quote from thebikeinsurer.tv you will be able to compare all 3 levels of cover - Comprehensive, Third Party Fire & Theft and Third Party Only plus you will also be guaranteed your cheapest online bike insurance deal.

With thebikeinsurer.tv you can either compare quotes online 24 hours a day or instead you can choose to compare quotes over the telephone instead.

Article by Dan

Permalink

 

One of my friends just advertised her bike, a 5 year old GSXR 600 on Ebay last week and by today there had been over 1400 views, had recieved 34 bids and sold the bike for £300 more than she hoped to receive.

So this made us decide to have a look at some other bikes on Ebay and see just how many people were looking at a selection of bikes that we chose from random. And to say we were amazed is a total understatment, get this;

Bike no.1 - A 2003 Honda Fireblade with 7000 miles on - with 2 days left the bids were at £2100 and there had been 1144 viewings.

Bike no 2. A 2006 Yamaha R1 with 4500 miles on in blue - one day left, the bids were at £3450 and there were over 1500 viewings.

Bike no 3. A 2000 Suzuki Bandit 600 with 22000 miles on in the original green. Bids were at £600 with over 1000 viewings.

The best bike we found was this one;

A 1993 Suzuki GSXR750M, the last of the proper GSXR's with just 12000 miles on, one owner from you and in the best blue and white colours. The bid was at just over £2000 with over 2200 viewings.

So it seems like the used bike market is absolutely flying, which is great news for sellers of used bikes and also great news for buyers as the bike insurance costs for used bikes are generally much cheaper than trying to insure than new bikes.

Article by Dan.

Permalink

 

Motorcycle insurance from The Bike Insurer

I was leafing through some old pics of bikes I use to own back in the day when I found a pic of a very rare bike that Id completely forgotten about - my Honda NS400R. For those of you unfamiliar with the NS400, what made it such a great bike was the it was a two stroke V3 triple and it made 72bhp @ 9500. It was modeled on the 500cc big brother as used in the GP class in the mid 80's. I think today its still the fastest 400cc bike ever made.

Anyway, back to the story. So for those of you who know me, you will remember that I used to work for a company in Peterborough that published loads of bike magazines. One of the few benefits of working for this company was there there were a load of hot chicks there, I mean loads and loads. One of the girls there that I used to enjoy eyeing up was someone we will call Zoe, mainly cos thats what her name is.

So one day, after a day at work, I was just leaving the office car park on my bike when I saw Zoe leaving in front of me. Being a sneaky boy I though it would be a great idea to see where she lived so that I could plan on being 'in the area' one day and bump into her. So pretending I was some KGB spy I kept a distance and followed from a distance. A few minutes later she arrived home and I, being highly pleased with myself, carried on riding home at an excited speed.

On the road I lived in at the time, which was particularly busy at the best of times and with loads of side roads I decided it would be a great idea to wheelie my bike down the road. In hindsight this probably wasnt the best thing to do at rush hour in a busy area as no sooner had I got the front wheel up as a car pulled out of a junction from my right and, even though I managed to get the front wheel on the floor again I, I didnt have time to stop and proceeded to ride into the car and break my right leg.

Needless to say the bike was written off but rather amusingly, a friend of mine at the time who is a very well known bike accident lawyer, managed to win me 4k for my injury, my bike got paid out and I got a month off work.

Sadly for me, the friends I trusted not to tell Zoe what happened were not friends at all and when I did eventually return to work, my humiliation was complete.

Article by Dan.

Permalink

 

We are highly delighted to announce that The Bike Insurer, the UK's 1st motorcycle insurance comparison service, has been selected to sponsor the Moto GP television coverage for the 2009 season which is being screened on Eurosport.

Starting in Losail this weekend, the Moto GP championship for this year looks like it could be even more exciting than the 2008 championship and Eurosport will be there for every round.

Eurosport will be showing the live qualifying, live races of the 125cc and 250cc races and then the Moto GP race, which will have a slight delay. Also there will be highlights throughout the following week showing each of the races.

Whenever Eurosport show the racing, you can also see The Bike Insurer alongside. Here is a full list of the race calendar for the 2009 Moto GP championship.

12th April -  Qatar

26th April -  Japan

3rd May - Spain

17th May - France

31st May - Italy

14th June - Catalunya

27th June - Netherlands

5th July - USA

19th July - Germany

26th July - UK

16th Aug - Czech Republic

30th Aug - Indianopolis

6th Sep - San Marino

4th Oct - Portugal

18th Oct - Australia

25th Oct - Malaysia

8th Nov - Valencia

Permalink

 

So we are off on our travels to the USA to look at options for launching a motorbike insurance price comparison website over there.

The market over there seems very different to here. USA motorbike insurance is generally administered by a few motorbike insurance companies who sell directly, rather than having the broker market as we have in this country. There are benefits and downsides to this method of working and Im going to show below the differences between USA motorbike insurance and UK motorbike insurance from a buying perspective;

UK motorbike insurance:

So in the UK there are only a couple of direct to consumer insurers, Ebike and Norwich Union, both of which only really target a really small sector of the bike market, meaning they are usually uncompetitive for the masses.

Instead what we have is 8-10 insurance companies, and you have probably heard of some of them including ERS, Zenith, Groupama, Highway, Markerstudy and a few more. These insurance companies then distribute their insurance products via a network of insurance brokers, and you see these advertising on the web or in MCN for example.

What usually happens is that the insurance company start off with one base product and then modify it accordingly for brokers that are looking to target specific areas of the market. So for example if broker A goes to Zenith and asks for a discount for riders of Honda bikes because they have a deal with Honda to replace bikes at a discount in the event of a claim then the insurer may tweak their rates for Honda riders to broker A but because broker B does not have this facility with Honda then their rates will be more expensive. This is the reason that you see big differences between brokers on a price comparison website when the insurer is the same.

Ultimately, the UK way of working provides more competition and reduces prices as brokers get more discounts from insurers and pass them onto the end user.

USA motorbike insurance:

The insurance companies sell direct to the public and therefore dont have lots of brokers trying to get a differential between their rates and those of a competitor. The big brands for insurance in the USA are State Farm, Geico and Allstate.

The brands are reliant upon their brand marketing to bring customers through the doors, rather than majoring on the price benefits.

We believe that we can change the way USA motorbike insurance is sold over there by replicating our price comparison model from the UK and introducing competition for the insurers by focusing on the price and benefits of the policy.

We will keep you informed as we find out more. As The Bike Insurer is the biggest introducer of bike insurance in the UK by a long way, we really feel its a great time to go and do exactly the same thing in the USA. Riders want to save money all over the World and thats exactly what we do!

Article by Dan

Permalink