Here at CIG we’ve been getting a lot of questions asking about the 20-group insurance rating system and what happened to it. So in this blog post we hope to clear things up!
From 1992 until 2006, the Group Rating Panel classified new cars using a 20-group system. At the time, using 20 groups was sufficient given the number and variety of vehicles in production at the time.
There were originally 9 groups, and just as an update was required in 1992, another was agreed in 2006. The ever-increasing range of vehicles on sale – including city cars, 4x4s, SUV/crossovers, people carriers etc – is the reason for the latest update.
The increasing range of vehicle types available – including SUV/crossover/4x4s like this BMW – have forced the expansion of the group rating system
The result: 20 groups has now become 50, with cars available to purchase as new from 2006 have been included in the 50 grouping dataset. Insurance companies took a couple of years to get up to speed with the new groupings, but at the time of writing this article, the 50 group is the standard industry approach for modern cars.
There’s not a direct way to translate 20-group to 50-group ratings, but as a quick calculation you can multiple the 20-group by 2.5. So a car in group 4 on the old scale would be around group 10 on the new scale.
We recently updated our website to provide you with access to a list of cars from the new 50 group data. Head over to our group rating directory to browse the groups and uncover cars in specific groups – particularly useful if you’re looking for a car in a low insurance group.