What Is Excess Insurance & What Can It Cover?

It might be helpful to consider a few examples to see how excess insurance works and just what it covers:

Home Excess Insurance

If you are a homeowner, safeguarding your property with building and contents insurance is important – insurance of the building is mandatory if you are buying with the help of a mortgage.

If you are a tenant, it is still important to insure the contents of your home to safeguard your possessions and personal effects.

Both building and contents insurance policies, however, also come with excesses – the first part of any claim for which you remain personally responsible – and these may vary in amounts according to the type of claim you are making.

Whatever the amount of excess, it may deter some people from even making a perfectly valid claim if they know they have to make such a contribution.

With excess insurance, however, any amount of excess may be safely covered so that the amount you need to pay is promptly reimbursed, thanks to the standalone, supplementary protection.

In this way, you stand to win twice over, because with any amount of excess safely protected you might feel confident in accepting a higher level of voluntary excess on your general insurance policies in order to earn a reduction in premiums.

Private Car Excess Insurance

As you might expect, therefore, protecting the excess on your own motor insurance policy works in much the same way – any excess you are required to pay is safely covered.

What marks us out at Bettersafe, however, is that in the case of private car excess insurance, the amount you are required to contribute for any repairs subject to your valid claim is paid directly to the garage carrying out those repairs.

This not only saves you any embarrassment when it comes to completing the payments for the release of your repaired vehicle but might also save you the expense of having to arrange a short-term loan simply in order to effect the excess payment.

Car Hire Excess Insurance

Many people might first come across this type of insurance when checking out their hire car on holiday.

The agent at the desk is almost certain to point out the high excess liability to which you might be exposed in the event of an accident – typically in a range of several hundred to well over a thousand pounds – and the prudence therefore in buying the rental company’s excess insurance cover.

According to the Money Saving Expert, buying the excess insurance cover for your hire car in this way might amount to little more than a rip-off.

This website – and many other sources – instead recommends your purchase of such cover from a UK-based, independent and specialist provider before you so much as set a foot outside your front door.

Not only is independently bought standalone insurance almost certain to be cheaper, it commonly offers a greater amount of protection. 

Excess insurance, therefore, may cover any liability you have to pay an excess on a variety of general insurance products – relieving you of any nasty shock in the event of having to make a claim.