A Guide To Using Standalone Car Hire Excess Insurance

A more cost-effective – and typically more comprehensive – way of securing that protection, however, lies in standalone excess insurance bought from an entirely independent UK based provider.
 
At Bettersafe, we are specialists in the provision of just such cover and offer the following synopsis of how it may be used.
 
Standalone
The meaning of the term standalone is simply that the insurance policy is quite separate to the insurance that comes with your hire car package.
 
Car hire excess insurance may be complementary to the insurance provided with the hire car, but it is entirely distinct, is underwritten by a different insurer and offers the settlement of claims through a quite different process.
 
Reimbursement
This standalone insurance is used in a simple and straight forward manner. If you have an accident in your vehicle, the hire car company typically imposes an insurance excess to which you have agreed as part of the rental agreement.
 
That excess may be an eye-watering sum of £1,000 or more and the very reason for your having the foresight to arranged car hire excess insurance protection. The additional, standalone cover for the excess ensures that any amount you are required to pay to the rental company is promptly reimbursed under the terms of the separate, complementary policy.
 
Period of cover
If you buy your excess insurance from the company from which you are hiring the car, you are typically charged at a (high) daily rate for the duration of the rental period.
 
If you buy from an independent provider of standalone insurance, however, you typically pay a single premium for cover that extends for the duration of the hire period, whatever its length – though usually subject to a maximum hire period of, say, 60 days.
 
Unlike the product offered by car rental companies, you might also arrange standalone excess insurance that keeps you covered throughout the year, no matter how many times you need to hire a car, wherever in the world you need to do so. Annual cover purchased in this way is typically cheaper on a trip by trip basis than the cover for a single, one-off period of hire.
 
Extent of cover
Standalone car hire excess insurance also works to offer more comprehensive cover than that often supplied by a car rental company. Policies bought from the latter typically exclude from any insurance cover damage to certain parts of the hired vehicle – commonly, the roof and underside of the car, and its tyres and wheels and windows.
 
Standalone excess protection on the other hand usually has no such exclusions but makes prompt reimbursement of any excess that might have been paid following loss or damage to any part of the hired vehicle.