Car insurance (whether it’s annual or temporary car insurance), costs drivers a fairly large sum of money every year, but unfortunately it’s an unavoidable part of driving legally in the UK. There are however a few ways you can cut your insurance premium, and one of those ways is how you’ve chosen to describe your occupation.

The majority of people won’t put any real thought into their occupation when filling out an insurance application; they just tick the appropriate box and carry on with the form. However the way you phrase your job description and job title can have a real difference on your quote.

The reason this makes such a difference is that insurers percieve different occupations to be riskier than others, so they’ll categorise occupations with varying percieved risk levels. So to an insurance provider, one occupation is seen as riskier than another, and will therefore end in a more expensive premium.

Their decisions are not based entirely on assumptions and guesswork, they’ll get their risk assessment from statistics demonstrating how much (on average) certain professions claim for, and how often.

It’s difficult to gauge exactly which occupations are seen as the most risky, as it tends to change depending on the insurer. But in general, estate agents, chefs, doctors and cabin crew are amongst the most likely professions to claim, and therefore will likely get higher quotes on their insurance. Conversely, ambulance drivers, horiticulturalists and farmers are seen as being amongst the least likely to make a claim.

It’s well worth being aware of, and you can try it out for yourself. Find an insurer who will allow you to do an instant car insurance quote and see how the occupation affects the final quote. You should find in some cases that it can double or sometimes even halve your claim depending on little more than your job description.

You might wonder how you can use this to improve your insurance quote; unfortunately you really can’t just lie on your application, as it could end up in your insurer rejecting your claim (should you ever have to make one). Something you can do however is change the wording of your job description - you’ll have to do a bit of experimenting but see how ‘I work in an office’ differs to ‘I work in a call centre’ and see if you can save yourself some money.

So, whether you’re applying for one day car insurance on a mini or yearly insurance on a Ferrari, it’s well worth doing a little bit of research before filling out the occupation section of your application. You could end up saving yourself a considerable sum of money!