What Is Standalone Car Rental Insurance?

Wherever in the world, you happen to be hiring, the question of insuring your rental car may be more confusing than it first seems.

In the UK and Europe, for instance, the rate you see advertised typically includes an insurance package against the risk of accidental damage – although this cover invariably excludes cover for damage to certain parts of the vehicle, such as the windows, tyres, wheels, underside and roof.

If you are hiring the car in the Americas or the Caribbean, the picture may be even more confusing because any insurance you want to protect yourself is typically sold separately – and might involve a bewildering array of different types of insurance, from Collision Damage Waivers (CDW), Loss Damage Waivers (LDW), and Theft Protection (TP) to Supplemental Liability Insurance (SLI).

What arrangements do you make for the insurance of your hire car, you may be sure of one thing – it is highly likely to carry a fairly hefty excess (or deductible, as it is called in North America).

Standalone car rental insurance offers a way of insuring this excess so that if when you need to pay it, you have an independent cover that promptly reimburses that sum.

Why Buy It?

Since the excess carried by the insurance cover for your hire car is likely to be an amount varying between £500 and £1,000 (or more if you have chosen a high-end make and model), it makes sense to protect that potential expense with excess insurance – indeed, your car rental company is almost certainly likely to offer it to you.

So if you are able to buy the cover from the hiring company, why buy a standalone product – from an independent, UK-based specialist provider, such as us here at Bettersafe?

Probably the biggest gripe about the insurance offered by the car rental company is that it is going to add a considerable sum to the daily rate of your hire car.

To make matters worse, some drivers may discover only too late that the rental company’s cover also excludes damage to certain parts of the vehicle – typically the underside, roof, windows, wheels and tyres.

Standalone insurance, on the other hand, maybe you have arranged on payment of a single premium which covers the entire period you are hiring the car – up to a maximum hire period that is advised by the provider.

It is possible to make even greater savings – and give yourself the reassurance and peace of mind that you have year-round hire car excess insurance – by arranging annual cover, which again involves the payment of just a single premium.

Where Is It Possible To Buy Such Insurance?

The beauty of this standalone insurance is that you may buy it simply and easily online before you so much as set out on your journey.

Standalone car rental insurance, therefore, may give you the means of avoiding what are generally considered to be the high costs of the excess cover offered by car rental companies.