Excess Insurance for Hire Cars
What is Car Hire Excess Insurance, and how does it work?
When you hire a rental car, there will be an insurance policy that goes with the rental. This insurance policy covers damage to the vehicle. Unfortunately, in virtually every case, there will be an "excess amount", i.e., an amount you have to pay before the insurance pays the rest. For example, let us say that you have a car hire with an excess of €500. An unfortunate accident results in €1200 worth of damage to the car. You will have to pay the excess, or first €500, and the insurance will cover the remaining €700.
When you are picking up the car, you will generally be given two options:
1. Leave a signed credit card imprint for the amount of the excess insurance. If there is damage to the car, this credit card imprint would be processed to recover the excess.
2. Purchase excess insurance from the car rental company. These policies are generally sold on a daily rate, and are quite expensive.
Most car hire companies offer a cheap daily rental rate and then expect to make their profit from selling you extras like excess insurance at a daily rate. You will always notice how they push this product to you as soon as you arrive to pick up your vehicle at the car rental desk
What we can offer via our Car Hire Excess Insurance is a much better rate for this excess insurance. We can generally offer a saving of up to 60% on the daily excess insurance charge from the rental company, along with a coverage package that actually covers more than the standard insurance policies available direct from the car rental company. In addition to covering the standard excess items such as loss or damage to any glass on the vehicle, tyres and under-body, our policies also include, as standard, , Baggage (whilst in the vehicle), Personal Accident to anyone named on the policy, the Car Keys, Drop-Off charges and Locked Out charges!
You would follow option 1 with the car hire company. If any damage was to occur to the car, the car rental company would charge your credit card as normal. You would then ensure you have all the documentation required for your own excess insurance, and put in a claim to get your money back.
What we offer
We offer two different types of Car Rental Excess Insurance. There is a daily product, which covers jurneys up to 180 days in length, and a yearly product which covers an unlimited number of car rentals in one year, with a maximum rental duration of 31 days per rental.
In addition, and very importantly in markets such as North America, it is possible to "top-up" the third party cover by up to $1,000,000. This can be very important, as the third party cover that is available on some US policies, for example, can be very low.
What we recommend depends on how many trips you make in a year where you rent a car. If you only make one or two short trips, you should look at our daily excess insurance package. If you rent cars for longer trips, or more frequently, a yearly excess insurance policy would probably work out cheaper.
Some other key points :
- Covers the excess on the car rental agreement up to £2,000 per incident, £3,000 in total per car rental agreement. This amount increases to US$80,000 for rentals outside of Europe.
- Insures anyone aged 21 to 84 with a full driving licence as long as they are named on the policy and car rental agreement
- Daily and Annual policy options
- Cover includes rentals in home country if permanently resident in the UK or Ireland
- Covers rentals worldwide
- Option to top-up third party liability insurance.
Who is providing the insurance?
The insurance is provided by Questor Insurance, an Independent insurance
intermediary regulated by the
Financial Services Authority
(firm reference 466942).
The insurance is underwritten by
White Insurance Ireland Limited,
a Thomas Cook Group company,
who are specialist travel insurers
with the appropriate experience
and strong financial standing.
White Horse are based in Ireland,
where they are regulated by the
Irish Financial Services
Regulatory Authority.
How can I find out more?
Simply head over to our Excess Insurance suppliers' web page, at
