When you hire a car you will normally be covered for theft and collision damage waiver under insurance for car hire, but if the car is stolen or damaged, you will have to pay a portion of the costs under your rental agreement. This is known as “excess”. To avoid paying this excess, which can run into rather high digits depending on the damage to the vehicle, you can take out excess insurance and reduce the amount of excess you will have to pay.
Your excess insurance for car hire is relatively inexpensive. Other possible benefits include:
• The replacement of the rental car key if you lose it. If this is not automatically included in the plan, you can often choose to take out this cover as an additional upgrade. Another upgrade is Personal Accident Insurance.
• All the drivers names on the rental agreement will be covered.
• You can also be covered for damage to tyres, the roof, undercarriage and windows of the car. These items are usually not part of the rental agreement.
Excess insurance for car hire can be provided on a variety of plans, depending what the company has on offer. Frequent travellers may choose annual multi-trip cover, borrowed vehicles can sometimes be covered under SLI insurance, and cover is available for hires that extend up to 180 days.
The annual excess insurance for car hires is the best option if you think you may hire a car more than once a year. This is more convenient as it insures you are covered throughout the year. With certain companies and particularly in Europe, the difference between to annual and daily excess insurance policies is minimal so taking out the annual insurance policy will allow you extra cover at a minimal cost. In Canada for the United States, however, the daily excess car insurance is a more economical option, unless you plan on hiring a car for a period longer than 3 weeks.
Excess insurance for car hire may not be worthwhile if you are only hiring a car for a very short time, but if you will be driving a rental car often it is worth having yourself covered against high excess charges.
