The risk assessment which car insurance companies carry out before giving you a quote includes factors like your age, sex, where you live and your driving history. It also considers your employment.



You can see quite different quotations if you search online keying in different occupations. A quote from one particular supermarket varied between 713 pounds for a ‘professional' applicant and 793 pounds for ‘manual'. In that case the actual employment was unspecified but other insurers can vary their prices for different jobs quite dramatically.

So your job can affect the cost of your car insurance dramatically. But what job should you go for? You'd pay a fortune in premiums if you were a young Man U footballer driving a Bentley or two (but then you could afford it) and it is rumoured that some players may be paying over 10,000 pounds a year for their policies.

But on the other end of the scale employees in an industry with a reputation for being careful and, dare I say it, boring, such as accountants or civil servants will be paying the lowest rates. This group also includes solicitors, admin clerks, shop assistants and IT consultants.

Middle of the road or medium risk occupations include being a sales rep, an electrician or running your own decorating business.

The AA claim that the assessment of risk related to different jobs is based on a history of claims, and applicants in the cheapest groups tend to run fewer risks of loss or damage to their vehicles.

On the other hand, people in ‘high-risk' jobs expose their vehicles to greater risk. It's not about automatically labeling them bad drivers, though of course a poor record with lots of speeding points will have a detrimental effect on anyone's application, but it's where the car is parked while you are working or maybe to do with when you are driving it.

So, parking near a pub or city centre club where drunken revelers may find it amusing to damage the car on their way home is bad news for a publican's premiums. Or driving home in the early hours after a long-haul flight if you're an air stewardess.

Other high-risk occupations include being a photographer or a model, or working in the entertainment industry.

Jobs themselves are subject to differing interpretations by the insurance companies. The AA found prices varying from six to 60 pounds between policies for the same named jobs when they examined 11 insurance companies' quotations. However, they also found that occupation did not affect quotes from 15 insurers who charged workers in every field the same.

One 30-year-old family man in London investigating online was quoted 481 pounds if he were a librarian or a solicitor, 498 pounds as a teacher, but a whacking 550 pounds for working in a fast-food joint. As a hospital porter his quote would increase even more to 573 pounds, so he'd be paying 93 pounds more than a well-heeled solicitor.

However, the system would not supply a quotation when he claimed to be unemployed.

Some companies offer discounts to drivers in certain market sectors, such as health or education, so look out for those kinds of deals and see the cost of your car insurance fall, maybe even to accountant level!