Okay, you have been a disqualified driver, the ban is now up and you need an insurance policy to get back on the road again. What we now need to do is help you find a good car insurance policy, without it costing you the earth. It is not likely to be easy, but usually it can be done.
The first thing you have to do, and the one thing that many people completely forget about, is to reapply for your driving licence. When you were disqualified it would have been cancelled so although your ban is now up you have to formally request a new one. You should already have been sent an application form by the DVLA. Without it, any insurance that you do buy could be declared null and void by the insurer, and some of them do stoop to this type of trick, believe me. Once you have done that you can start your search, and if you are to get the best deals there are a few tips to follow.
The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth
When you fill in a proposal form it is vital that you give every relevant detail, the matter how embarrassing it may be, no matter how irrelevant you feel it must be. The reason for this is quite simple, the insurance companies will find out anyway. If you declare every problem right at the outset you will get a quote that may or may not blow your hat off but at least it will be one that you can rely on; if you leave out one or two pertinent facts you are likely to get a letter informing you of a huge increase in premium at best, and at worst withdrawal of your cover. Hopefully you will get this very soon because a number of insurers wait until after there is a claim before they investigate the policyholder's background, and that is when things can get really sticky. Bear in mind that if you do give false statements on a proposal form, or miss out certain details either deliberately or accidentally this information will probably be circulated to other insurance companies so you could have even more difficulty obtaining cover in the future.
Don't Apply for Insurance on Websites That Do Not Specialise in Drivers with Convictions
Every time you make an application for car insurance you leave a paper trail, even if you do this online. More to the point, every time you get turned down, and this will happen if you go to the majority of non-specialist insurers, that fact will be recorded and may be made available to other insurance companies. The majority of proposal forms include a question which goes something like; 'have you ever been refused insurance by any other company'; if you answer "yes", your application may be automatically refused, whilst if you answer "no" and they find out that this is not the case (as they almost certainly will) the excrement can hit the fan so it is important to go to specialist companies who deal with this type of business, and no others.
Consider a Downgrade
You may be used to driving around in a very nice car such as Jaguar, Mercedes, Porsche etc but you could well find that premiums, now that you have had a disqualification, can be eye watering or non-existent. Consider trading down to a small family car for a while, you can always trade back up again when you have some safe driving time behind you.
Look at the Policy Excess
If you offer to pay a higher voluntary excess you may well get your insurance at a lower price. You have to be careful with this though; the average claim in the UK is in still under £1000, so if you are paying a high proportion of this as a voluntary excess then apart from your legal obligations to carry third-party cover you might just as well not be insured at all in many cases. Some insurance companies offer a substantial decrease in premiums for high voluntary excesses, but others don't so look at the figures carefully before you make up your mind.
The Nuclear Option
Please don't reject this out of hand but think about it; if your offences in the past have been such that you either cannot get insurance at all, or just at enormous cost, have you thought about having a motorbike or scooter instead? It is not so long ago that most of us automatically thought about motorbikes when we considered having our own transport, and although they are out of fashion these days there are still an awful lot of middle-aged and even elderly bikers who wouldn't consider swapping them for a car. You don't have to look upon this as a permanent change, you could always go back to a car after a year of safe driving, but you never know, you may catch the bug. And to be brutally realistic, it may be your only option; disqualified drivers insurance is not always available, for every driver.