Perhaps one of the most reliable ways is to ask yourself what it might cost if you do not have the relevant cover and use this figure to help gauge the money you are in fact saving.

This might prove a helpful way of starting to see how excess insurance may save you money:

Pay The Excess

• Practically every kind of general insurance has an excess attached – the first part of any claim for which you remain financially responsible.
• Depending on the nature of the principal cover, the excess might be counted in tens of pounds or rise to more than £1,000.
• Without the savings that excess insurance brings, you end up paying the whole of that excess, without any prospect of it being reimbursed.

Hire Car Excess Insurance

• The whole question of hire car excess insurance is probably a story in itself – and one that generally ends badly, with tales about car rental companies misrepresenting the product and charging a great deal of money for it.
• Yet, with the excess being in the order of £1,000 to £1,500, or more, you stand to risk paying a great deal for any serious damage to your hire car.
• You might want to cut through any deception, smoke, mirrors and high prices by buying your hire car excess insurance directly from an independent specialist – such as us here at Bettersafe – before you even leave home.

Home Insurance

• It might also be useful to see how home insurance works in practice.
• Your home building and contents insurance typically incorporate different levels of excess depending on the nature of the claim you are making – a £50 excess, let’s say, on a claim for damage an item of your home’s contents or £1,000 or more in the event of a claim for subsidence.
• In either case, the prospect of having to pay that excess might put you off the whole idea of making a claim – although you have paid the premiums, you choose not to claim and effectively lose the benefits for which you have paid.
• With a home excess insurance policy, however, you can reclaim the excess amount.

Motor Insurance

• The compulsory excess – which you have little choice but to accept if you want the cover – may also be high, especially if you are a younger driver.
• If you do not have excess insurance, this is the amount you may need to pay in the event of a claim – and your repairing garage is unlikely to release your car back to you until that excess is paid.
• One of the unique features of the private car excess insurance we provide at Bettersafe is the payment direct to such a repairer in the event of a valid claim on your principal motor insurance on your part – thus saving you the hassle, and possible expense, of having first to raise the money to pay the excess to the garage, before later claiming reimbursement from other providers of excess insurance.

The Bonus

• There is an additional bonus with excess insurance on your motor and home insurance policies that help you to save even more money.
• On both home and motor insurance you may typically enjoy an attractive reduction in the cost of the premiums by accepting a higher excess – but might be wary of accepting it if you have to contribute even more than the compulsory excess in the event of a claim.
• With the security and confidence have given by excess insurance – and the freedom from bearing the expense of any excess – you might readily accept the deal for reduced insurance premiums.
• However you measure the savings you might make on buying insurance, therefore, it is clear that excess insurance might leave you better off than without it.