A recent investigation by a San Francisco company in the US uncovered a worrying trend of motorists declaring their sports cars as farm vehicles on their insurance policies in order to reap discounts of up to 20% on their annual motor insurance policy.
Quality Planning was called in to verify the details on thousands of car insurance policies, the LA Times reported, and found that out of 80,000 policies it investigated, 8% so some 6,382 vehicles, were registered for farm use and yet they were registered to an address where less than 1% of the population in that area are engaged in agriculture.
One of the examples flagged up by the investigation cited an Audi A4 model which was registered to an inner city address in Brooklyn, New York City, however the owner had claimed on the insurance document that the car was for farm-use, saving the driver $389 a year on the cost of cover.
Insurance providers offer concessionary rates on insurance policies for vehicles which are largely engaged in farm use as they are statistically less likely to be involved in accidents with other vehicles or to fall victim to theft compared to urban cars.
However this practice of wrongly claiming cars for farm use is costing the insurance industry £150 million a year in unpaid premiums and so insurers have decided to get tough on these unscrupulous drivers by bringing in outside companies to verify the data of their policy holders – so be warned, if your Porsche is registered for farm use to save you a few quid, now’s probably a good time to change it.
