JLR (formerly known as Jaguar Land Rover) will offer £150 per month towards the cost of its in-house insurance for buyers of new Range Rovers and Range Rover Sports.
The firm began offering its own policies last October following a sharp rise in premiums on Range Rovers. This was due to the high theft rate of the previous-generation models.
The new contributions will apply to cars registered between 1 May 2024 and 30 September 2024 that are covered under Land Rover’s in-house insurance division. The car’s value cannot exceed £150,000, which excludes the range-topping SV variants of the Range Rover (£161,755) and Range Rover Sport (£168,500). The Range Rover Evoque and Range Rover Velar do not qualify for the discount.
According to data from the DVLA, the Range Rover Sport was the fifth most stolen car in the UK last year, with 1631 taken. This was 29% lower than in 2022, thanks to Land Rover’s initiative to retrofit upgraded security measures to the previous-generation Range Rover and Range Rover Sport. Some 150,000 cars (produced since 2018) have received security software updates in the past two years, JLR said.
The firm is still working to develop upgrades for those built in 2016 and 2017.
JLR CEO Adrian Mardell told company investors in March 2023 that “theft of our vehicles in large cities has become a problem”, highlighting London and Manchester. He noted that it was “mostly old-architecture” cars at risk, hence the programme to upgrade these cars’ security software.
Mardell has since highlighted the security of the current-generation Range Rover. In February 2024, he said: “The police national computer shows only 0.08% of new Range Rovers – just 11 vehicles out of 12,800 vehicles which have been passed over to clients since launch two years ago – have been stolen. It’s 15 for the new Range Rover Sport.
“I’m not sure which other brand could actually claim such a high level of security and a low level of theft.”
This means “there is no reason whatsoever why any insurance company should not gladly and readily insure those new vehicles”, Mardell said.
He added: “The insurance industry clearly are not using the information in the data, which is a consistent series of dialogues and messages we’ve had with that industry for the last six months. They are very slow to respond to data.”