It seems harder to get insurance today if you are a young driver then it did in the past. Car insurance companies seem to be turning their backs on young drivers especially those under 21 years of age.
Many young people who are at college or university do not need to drive most of the time and only need to have access to a car in the holidays. Ideally you would have a standard annual policy to drive your car but if you only drive for a relatively short period of the year you are paying out much more then you should have to. As a student you can't really afford to waste money on paying for something that you cannot use.
There is a type of car insurance that can provide temporary cover to allow you to get insured for a short period of time. The problem for many younger drivers however is that most insurers providing temp cover only do so to people who are at least 21 years of age. Most students however are under 21 which means there are a lot of potential drivers who cannot get insured.
There is anecdotal evidence that many of the major insurers will not allow young drivers to take out an additional policy on their parents car. It is illegal to be added as a named driver on a policy if you are in actual fact the main driver, many parent do this to allow their children to get insured either knowingly fronting the policy or unknowingly doing so.
You will find that once you add your age to the car insurance quote form you will often see a message stating that you have to be 21 or over in order to proceed with the quote. To us it may seem like the insurer is turning away good business, we all know young drivers are charged an arm and a leg for a policy so to us it is money the insurance company is losing out on.
The fact is that the car insurance firms in the UK are not stupid and have the data to show that insuring a younger driver is a liability that is more likely to lead to a claim, and claims cost money - far more than a driver will ever pay in premiums. So for an annual policy a company providing annual policies can increase their premiums to cover their potential loses. For a temporary policy however there is much less leeway as the driver is only going to be paying their premiums for days rather than a whole year.
So this means for under 21 year old drivers it is not possible or unlikely that you will be able to get temp cover to be able to drive for a few days. Other than taking the hit an insuring your car for a whole year the only other alternative is to get a pay as you go policy. Pay as you go car insurance or a pay monthly policy allows you to get insured a month at a time. This will save you money against annual cover and you can get insured from as young as 17 years of age.