It is insurance designed to protect you against the excess typically incorporated into any insurance package for your hire car. It is a supplement to and quite independent of the underlying insurance against loss or damage of the vehicle and is therefore known as standalone insurance.

Why Choose Car Hire Excess Insurance?

Whether you accept the insurance package typically offered by your car rental company or arrange to cover yourself, you are likely to be faced with the liability of a very high excess in the event of loss or damage to the vehicle. In many cases, the excess may be as much as £1,500.

To protect yourself against such a liability, there is supplementary car hire excess insurance – and it is almost certain to be offered to you by your car rental company.

Why Choose Standalone Excess Insurance?

Although your hire car company is likely to offer excess insurance, it is widely accepted that this is an expensive add-on.

The government-backed Money Advice Service, for instance, says quite unequivocally that the cover bought from a car rental company represents poor value for money and frequently excludes damage to certain risks – such as you mistakenly using the wrong fuel, losing the keys, vandalism and even the theft of the vehicle.

When you choose standalone excess insurance from an entirely independent, UK-based specialist provider, however, the cost of this useful cover is invariably more competitively priced – and typically may offer more comprehensive cover too.

A competitively priced product is our aim here at Bettersafe, where our car hire excess insurance is genuinely comprehensive, covering all risks, including theft, vandalism and damage to such areas of the vehicle as its undercarriage, roof, wheels, tyres and windows (damage which is typically excluded from the cover provided by a car rental company).

The price for the single premium is determined by the number of days you are hiring the vehicle and the part of the world in which you are going to be driving it.

If you are a frequent traveller and often use a hire car, there may be even further savings by arranging our annual, multi-trip excess insurance, which provides cover throughout the year, irrespective of the number of times or periods during which you are hiring a car.

Using Standalone Car Hire Excess Insurance

Using this type of insurance is very simple and straightforward. If there is loss or damage to your hire car and you are charged the excess, it is likely to be deducted automatically by the rental company via the pre-authorised credit card you used. On your return home, it is simply a question of claiming reimbursement of that charge under the terms of your standalone excess insurance policy.