Advice on Fleet Insurance
Legal stuff
This is just an introduction to fleet insurance and is not intended to be representative of the covers or restrictions offered by any particular insurance or that all insurance provide the protection described. You can get a recommendation for a particular insurance to suit your own circumstances by talking to the skilled staff at any Coversure branch.
Why buy Fleet Insurance?
As opposed to having an insurance policy for each vehicle? Having a fleet insurance will reduce the administrative burden on your organisation. You will have one renewal date and one insurer. Insurers are likely to charge less per vehicle for a fleet than if you covered each vehicle separately because their administrative burden is reduced too.
There are disadvantages too. Since your renewal for all of your vehicles will fall on the same day, this means that your cashflow may be adversly affected because you will have to find the total premium all at once. You may be able to spread the payment over a few months, but there is likely to be a credit charge for this.
What is covered?
All the same types of insurance that are available for any motor insurance will be available in a fleet form. The biggest difference is in how your fleet is rated by the insurer. Instead of rating on each vehicle and earning “No Claims Discount”, the insurer will rate on the claims experience of your entire organisation.
What is not covered?
Again the same things that are not covered by a motor policy, will not be covered by a fleet policy.
It is usual to have an excess on each claim, this is an amount of money that your organisation will have to pay and the insurer will pay the rest.
What does it cost?
It depends on how many vehicles you have, what the vehicles are, who drives them, what they are used for and where they are kept. For these reasons it is impossible to give a figure. If you have a minimum of 3 vans, Coversure can create a mini-fleet policy, but fleets normally require at least 5 vehicles.
What to watch out for?
Better policies will include travel to the EU. Look for the amount of cover for radios and stereo equipment and the amount of excess to be paid if you have a claim for a broken windscreen. Sometimes broken windscreens are not covered at all. It is normal now for your vehicle to not be covered for theft if you leave your keys in the vehicle.
What options are worth having?
The most common “add on” is legal protection insurance. This will provide you with help to recover your uninsured losses if you have an accident which is not your fault. For instance, if you have third party cover and someone runs into the back of your car, damage to your vehicle is not covered by your insurance, but should be covered by the other driver’s insurance. If you have legal protection insurance, you will have access to someone with the skills and experience to make sure that the other driver’s insurer reimburses you properly and in a timely fashion. If your car is unroadworthy as a result, they will be able to provide you with a hire car which should also be paid for by the other driver.
If you have comprehensive insurance, your insurer will normally provide this service for you, but you will still have uninsured losses such as your excess and the legal protection insurance will provide you with the expertise to get this back from the other driver.
You can also sometimes purchase discounted breakdown insurance with your fleet policy. This will normally represent a considerable saving over purchasing breakdown insurance directly from one of the motoring organisations.