This is Part 2 of a conversation with John Healy of Healys Insurances - if you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, we'd highly recommend it before jumping into this episode!

There's more to car insurance than claiming on accidents - it's about knowing when to use, which insurance to get and what you need to bring with you as an expat to save money on your premiums.

Talking more about Car Insurance in Ireland, I’m joined by John Healy of Healy’s Insurances, an expert with over 25 years of experience in insuring cars, homes and more. Healy’s Insurances is well-known in expat circles for helping people navigate the quirks of the Irish insurance market (though most notably for Mary Doyle, or “Mary of Healy’s!”).

In this Part 2, we dig deeper into the practicalities of insuring your vehicle in Ireland, including tips to avoid common pitfalls and how to ensure a smooth process when transitioning from foreign to Irish policies. John shares his wealth of experience, including why your no-claims bonus is invaluable, how car registration impacts your premiums, and what you need to know about imported cars.

We also bust some insurance myths, cover the pros and cons of bundling policies, and discuss what to do if you’re caught in the grey zone with your license or insurance timeline. Whether you’re planning your move or are already in Ireland scratching your head over insurance, this episode is packed with advice to help you make a plan that saves you money and gets into your car as soon as possible.

Main Topics in the Episode:

1. No-Claims Bonus is Key: Your no-claims bonus document from abroad is a must-have. Make sure it’s valid, canceled where necessary, and ready before you arrive in Ireland.
2. Car Registration Matters: Your car's reg impacts your insurance quote significantly, from its history (like past accidents) to its mileage. Check the car's insurance eligibility before buying.
3. License Logistics: Foreign licenses can work temporarily, but plan early to convert to an Irish license—especially if you’re from a country without a straightforward exchange process.
4. Imported Cars = Higher Costs: Be cautious when bringing in cars from outside Ireland, as niche models or past damages could hike up premiums or even make them uninsurable.
5. Claiming on Insurance: For minor damages, weigh the cost of paying out-of-pocket against claiming—especially if you’re a younger driver or lack bonus protection.

Contact Healys for Insurance today:

Email: info@healyinsurances.ie

*****

If you loved this episode or have a similar story, we'd love to hear from you! You can get in touch with us directly at info@expattaxes.ie or leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Taxbytes for Expats is brought to you by ExpatTaxes.ie. If you're considering moving to or from Ireland and would like support with your taxes, book a consultation today: https://expattaxes.ie/book-a-consult/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=CaptivateFM&utm_campaign=episode.

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Hi everyone, Podcast producer Matt here stepping in for Steph who is

still busy as we get closer to the new year. This

episode is part two with John Healey of Healey's Insurances.

So if you haven't listened to part one yet, scroll up in your feed and

give it a listen. Heelys is known in the expat community as the

place to get insurance, usually for cars. Mary Doyle

is the name most of you would know, but John has been working insurance for

decades. In part two we hear more great tips about getting

your car insurance an expat, a few insurance myths

busted, and some crucial stories that Steph and John

share around insurance that can help you with your insuring

experience. Remember, all the good stuff is in the show

notes. Enjoy.

I do think, you know, for the person who's listening to this and

maybe is planning a move, there's a couple of things that they can be proactive

about. So the first thing would be how quickly are you going to get your

no claims bonus documentation from the foreign broker? Is there any other,

anything else that they need apart from the three things that we've listed you mentioned

at the start and you know, if there is any other

tips or things that people should be aware of when they are going into the

kind of getting a quote phase? I mean use a

broker as the first piece of advice. But what would you say?

Yes, so there's a few things. So we've touched on the bonus, we've touched on

the license and the air code. The big piece of

data that would be next that has to be exact is the car,

the car reg. So when we in the in the old days,

which aren't that long ago, you could pick a blue Ford

Escort and I could give you an estimated price. Those days are

gone. So now it needs to have a reg to get

an exact quotation. And what tends to happen with that process

is like we don't see this inside in our office, we just click the

screen and it matches the car. What's happening in the

background using all the technology, there's 220 pieces

of data behind that ridge. So it has the nct, it has the

mileage and what you'll see at times is

a load of insurers saying no to the car. We're looking at this

going, what's going on here? You know, there's a story here. Obviously

it could be something as simple as the NCT and the tax are both

out. It could be sitting in a garage for a year for sale.

That's explainable. But it could also be the fact that it was used as a

taxi in Dublin. The mileage could be massive. Might have been involved in

crime. We won't get that data. It'll just decline. Insurer

1, no quote, car issue or car question

or, you know, there'll be something like that. So it actually happened a friend of

mine a number of years back when this came in first, the regular, the. What

do they call it? The car reg synchronization. And he was

changing cars midterm and the company wouldn't do it

on my system. I said, g, there's something up here. Will you

go back and ask the garage man, was this car crashed?

Was there something in the past? Anyway, he got back a couple of days later,

he said, yeah, thanks for that. Car was crashed before. So obviously I didn't buy

it. Oh, my goodness. So the insurers would decline to

insure because obviously it was a sufficiently serious crash.

Yes. Now there's different levels of write off. There are

some write offs that are acceptable to be fixed and go back on the road.

Right. And then there are others that are. No, that should not be put back

on the road. And funnily enough, I haven't seen this issue now in a long

time, to be fair, but at the moment,

the secondhand car market, it's hard to get cars. Oh, yeah, it's very tight,

isn't it? My husband's an avid car enthusiast. I

don't want to predict anything, but perhaps there's more of that refixing

cars than we realize out there. Because, you know, anywhere where

there's a short market of things, there'll be

people trying to find ways to get around that. But yeah, so the

car ridge is a huge piece of that. And when

I say the car ridge, I would take into account

the size of engine of the car and the year. I suppose they're the two

biggies. Yeah, they drive the. Yeah. Okay. So I

wouldn't go too old in the car. Up to 15 years. And

obviously, as a rule of thumb, the larger the engine

size, the more powerful the car, the higher the code. Usually I'm

taking very broad strokes now with that. Yeah, that's a very interesting point because

that is a concept that I know does not hold in Australia,

and I don't believe it holds in the US. It doesn't? No, no.

We penalize here cars based on emissions. Larger

cars emit more, therefore they are taxed higher and

correspondingly often have higher insurance premiums. It's

aimed, I suppose, to be a disincentive for kind of emitting

engines. Who knows? Yeah, on the. On the tax side. Yes, the car

tax side. On the insurance side, I think it's as simple as the more powerful

the car, the faster it goes. Yeah, yeah, it really is all style

underwriting, you know. Yeah, no, that. That makes perfect sense.

Slight departure from. From

car insurance, but I'm just conscious that, you know, if people

are trying to be smart about their money. Is there an

advantage to combining home and car insurance with the same

broker when you're in this niche? Is that where clients can kind of, I

suppose, drive a bit of value from the whole exercise? And because, you know, in

Ireland, you know, if you're a mortgage, you generally

need house insurance. You do. So, so. So yes,

on behalf of the broker side, it definitely helps both.

Funnily enough, from an insurer side, it's a bit of a nightmare. So we do

get that question asked of us an awful lot. You know, my car is with

insurer A. Can I not have my home with insurer A?

And our answer nine times out of ten will be, well,

they're both not the most competitive for your risk segment. Segment.

So that's why most of our customers are actually insured separately

for car and home with different insurers. The bundling

thing tends to be a bit of marketing, to be fair. Okay. Right. So

that's again, the value of using a broker. Take it the same. You

guys do health insurance as well? No, not anymore. It was something we found

very challenging. We pulled out of that, but good number of years ago now.

Very challenging area, actually. I see there's a new entrant in the last week,

actually, which should be. Should shake it up a little bit. But it's.

Yeah, it's a challenging area. I think you've imparted so many different

insights there for people. I've even learned from listening to you things I would not

have known. And as always, we always seem to say in this podcast, it pays

to be organized. Any other nuggets of

information you'd like people to go away with, or do you reckon we fit the

main nails on the head? Just a couple

of ones. We've gone through most of it. Beware

imported cars. We see it a bit. We see it a bit. And don't buy

the car without checking the price of the insurance, please. With that in

mind, if you are going to look at a car, you can ring

a broker with the, with the registration. So you said you don't get

pre approval but you can get an indicative cost. You can get in an indicated

quote. And at least we know there's a market then, because

ringing at 5 to 5 to say, yippee, I have the car might

be a problem if we don't know the car. And tell me about the

imported cars. Thinking about our UK listeners bringing

cars across that might have met the criteria to

be outside the VRT net because of having met the ownership requirements.

Why, why is that? That you would recommend. So UK is

probably all right because it's been going on for so long at this stage now

and I know it slowed down, didn't it? Wasn't there that tax implication that.

That changed a couple years ago. So we still have

VRT on cars coming in from the uk.

I know my husband has brought in a few cars and

yeah, the tax implications, I suppose, are still as punitive as

they always were. VRT is imposed on cars, you know, coming in

unless somebody has essentially owned them and driven them for a period of time,

both before and after the importation. Ok, yes, there's a bit. Yeah, I

know that. Yeah, yeah. I suppose the value, the market, I

suppose is given how secondhand cars are here at the moment in terms

of price, there's definitely more value in the UK market.

So what we're seeing, the UK ones would be fine.

Mostly, though not all. You're talking about the same models as well. Where we

see the issues are Japanese imports, which can. Some insurers won't

touch them and then you're pushed into a niche insurer

and the rates are much higher. Like I'm talking much, much higher. The other

one, what we see a lot of recently

is bringing home cars from Australia actually. Right,

yeah, we did that actually. We did get insurance, I think, but

it was a fairly. It was pretty pricey because it was a big. They're bigger.

Yeah, they're bigger. And you know, I'd put a health warning on it a little

bit. This is one in my own personal intuition, but

there could be a problem with these going forward. Like, I know I've been

dealing with insurers for 25 years. Insurers are

mostly risk averse. All it takes is

one accident involving A

vehicle that was perhaps imported into the country and maybe

wasn't synced right on the system. You know, are

the parts going to be readily available for a vehicle that's

not available in the Irish market other than importing it? Sometimes, no,

because sometimes they're actually models that don't exist on the Irish market.

Exactly. So. And the other thing with that is you're kind of

tying your hand behind your back. You might get covered the first year. And what

happens if that insurer decides we don't want that business anymore? Now, I

just think it could be a tricky area down the line. Probably serves to

highlight the value of putting the reg through an insurer's

database because you don't know what you're buying. It does. It

does. Absolutely. And, you know, just to get back, that kind of ties in, I'll

arc back a little bit to the. To the price of insurance. Like at the

moment, the biggest thing driving motor insurance costs

is motor damage claims. I will have mentioned

the injuries. That seems to have been slightly sorted. You

know, the guidelines are there. The damage cover is costing

insurers an absolute fortune. Why? Because of labor shortages,

supply chain issues with parts mechanics. Labor getting,

getting things done is still a huge issue. And,

and cost. The cost of anything now, you know, cost of a bumper

has gone up exponentially. So, and this is probably

a generic insurance question and I'll ask you, if

you're out driving and somebody. No.

You damage your own car. Right. Aesthetically,

not structurally, would you ever claim on your own insurance or do you try and

pocket? So in other words, you know, as a broker, what it's going to do.

What's. Is that a. That's a measured decision.

Yeah. Again, it. A lot of it depends on

your age. Like if you're. If you're a younger driver who's paying an

awful lot and hasn't built up their bonus, don't claim if

you're over 20. I ran into

a herd of deer a couple of years ago out in Killarney after I did

a walk. I hope they were okay. They were grand. Yeah.

My car wasn't the last. The last fella. It was the

last fella I hit, actually. It was lucky he didn't come in the windscreen.

But my car was fairly damaged. I could drive it all right,

but the light and the bumper and the whole lot came

to about, I think about three and a half, four grand. That was too much

to not claim for. Yeah. It's too much out of your pocket, isn't it? It

is so that went through and you know, my premium went up, but I had

bonus protection. You know, you can protect your bonus for 50 quid.

That's a little nugget for people as well.

Any of the online quotation engines. It's a tick

box because they want to sell the cheapest product. Again, it's marketing, it's

fantastic. It's like Ryanair. If you want the proper stuff,

you pay for the bags, you pay for the bonus protection, pay for the windscreen.

So my premium didn't go up that much. As a rule of thumb, you should

probably pay for something if it's in the hundreds. Yeah. You know, being realistic

about it. Yeah, yeah. If you can, if you can. And

we have that conversation a lot, you know, with people, you know, it could be

1200 and you're going, that's up to you, if you can. But if you can't,

then pull the trigger on it, you know. Yeah. It can be difficult.

Wow. Sorry. I've actually learned from this and I have no intentions

of taking out insurance. My husband deals with all that, thankfully.

Yes. There's usually one spouse in the

household. Oh, look, I'm, I'm an

insurance nerd. I love this stuff. There is so

much in it these days. But it's all good, it's all interesting. You

know, motor insurance tends to be reasonably competitive at

the moment though it's a bit on the up. Home insurance is okay, it's on

the up. That's a whole other discussion. But

they're necessary things and it's important, I

think, to get the right advice. You know, we're a people

facing face to face broker who use

technology in the background. Yeah. And there's huge value in that.

I think there is. Look, we all know that you can, you know, a

10 minute phone call gets an awful lot more done than a tread of emails

over two weeks. Oh, definitely, definitely. Or talking with an AI

bot, which is frustrating. It can be, yes.

How should people contact you and your team? So phone is the best

for email? Absolutely. What we tend to do with Mary

Doyle, who looks after our new business quotes for expat and

repat business, it tends to come in on email. Right. And then we, what we

do is we set up calls and appointments with her and kind of

request those documents that we discussed. So what

we would get an awful lot of would be they'd send in the license, the

American license, the Australian license, with maybe a copy of their

no cleanse bonus from a previous year that shows five or a most more recent

one. And some of them then will, you know, they'll have enough data to give

us mom and Dad's air code, things like that, and we can get the ball

rolling. Almost. Yeah. Started. What's Mary's email address?

Maryealyinsurances, ie. Brilliant. We'll drop that in the show notes.

And the website? Not working at the minute I have it

down. So that's coming back. It'll be. It'll be Q1 next year,

unfortunately. Yeah. Thank you so much, John,

for your time and for those amazing insights. There's so much in

that I think we'll have to get you back on in due course to

talk with home insurance. Absolutely. There's a lot in that.

Yeah. I'd be delighted to. Thanks for having me on. Thanks. Thank you very

much. Have a great day and yeah, we look forward to having you on a

future episode. Wonderful. Thanks, Dev.

Thanks for listening to Tax Bites for Expats. Please do leave a

rating or review wherever you listen to your podcast. And as always,

remember to take professional tax advice specific to your

personal circumstances before acting or refraining from action

in connection with the matters dealt with in this series. The material

in this podcast is intended to give general guidance only.