What Is Private Motor Excess Insurance & Do You Need It?

The excess, of course, is the first part of any motor insurance claim for which the insured remains personally liable – and with insurers’ settlements amounting to more than £19 million every day, that has also left private motorists contributing a very substantial sum alongside any claim.

Private Motor Excess Insurance

To defend yourself against the potentially high cost of any excess payment, at Bettersafe we are able to offer an additional, standalone private motor excess insurance policy that operates alongside your main private motor insurance policy.

With that protection in place, it means that any excess you need to pay on a claim is safely taken care of by the complementary, standalone excess insurance policy – provided, of course, that you have arranged sufficient excess cover to meet the demand from your main motor insurer.

We Also Go One Better

You might have seen other excess payment protection schemes that are available and which rely upon your claiming reimbursement of the excess you have already paid in the settlement of any motor claim. That very process of claiming reimbursement, however, depends on your paying the excess in the first place – and that represents a very real and genuine difficulty for many people.

The difficulty is that the garage, of course, needs to pay in full for the repairs made to your car before it is released back to you. The motor insurer may pay its share, but that still leaves the owner of the vehicle the bill for the excess. Raising that cash may be difficult and involve considerable time, hassle and expense if you have to take a bank loan to pay for it, for example.

Recognising those potential difficulties, we pay the repairing garage the excess directly on your behalf – so there is no delay in getting back your vehicle and no expense in raising the money which you may only claim for reimbursement after the event. Provided you have arranged sufficient excess insurance protection with us, therefore, all of these problems are dispelled.

But There’s More

When you arranged your main private motor insurance you are likely to have discovered that a so-called “compulsory” excess is incorporated into the policy. If you want the cover, there is little you are able to do but to accept it.

However, you might also opt for a further “voluntary” excess in order to reduce the price of the premiums you pay – by taking on a greater proportion of the risks, there remains less for the insurer and so premiums may be cheaper.

That theory may be fine, but in practice leave you with a still bigger contribution to make – by way of the excess payment – in the event of a claim. With private motor excess insurance, however, you may safely agree to such a voluntary excess, pocket the reduction in the price of premiums, and rest assured that the inflated excess amount is still going to be protected.