Protected no claims is a joke. I have 15 years NCB on my car with NCB protection. A week before renewal date, my wife has a small bump in the car and the other party, quite rightly, claims.
When I discuss the renewal, the insurance goes up by £200 because of the claim - I ask how, because I've been paying for 15 years to "protect" my no claims bonus.
Simple, they say, we're increasing your headline premium because of the accident, but you still have the same no claims discount. So, from my reckoning, the accident maybe cost £1000 to repair, of which I paid £450 (my excess). The insurance company then tripled my insurance premium for the next year, but then reduced it by my "maximum" no claims bonus - it's a total swizz. Insurance is no longer based on risk, it's based on the insurers recovering every penny from you when you have an accident, but giving you nothing back when you don't- effectively, it's not really insurance, they're just loaning the money for the claim.
Insurance was once a risk-reward "gamble" (both sides win some and lose some) but now that insurers aren't allowed by their parent companies to ever lose any money (and they must provide bigger profits every year to satisfy their investors), they've just become giant cash cows for big business investors and as long as insurance is a legal requirement for driving/riding, without any Statutory Auditing to ensure the punters are not being ripped off, then we are just going to get screwed harder and harder every year.
We're all doomed.......to insurance poverty !