What is EXCESS insurance?
Most insurance policies carry either a compulsory or voluntary excess, which is a fixed amount that you must pay out if you make a claim on your insurance policy. Progressively, insurance companies have increased premiums higher than inflation rises, so it is now common for them to also impose higher excesses, which can mean that for relatively minor claim you may end up paying large amount towards the claim due to the excess amount on your policy.
As an example, if your claim is £900 and your policy excess is £500, your insurance provider will pay only £400 of the cost, leaving you to make up the balance of £500. This is where excess protect adds real value to you, an excess protection policy will pay you back the excess premium you have had to pay, in the example above £500.
It is common for voluntary policy excesses to affect the premiums charged on the main insurance policy e.g. a higher excess is less risk to the main insurer, which means that the main insurer may drop the cost of the insurance. It is worth checking if a combination of the two can reduce your overall insurance costs i.e. that if you choose a higher excess and insure that excess as well, you may be better off overall; even so, you will always be liable to pay the policy excess unless you have it insured.
Personal Motor XS
You are covered for an amount equal to the excess in relation to each settled claim on your main personal motor vehicle insurance policy up to the annual aggregate limit of your XS policy in respect of claims arising from a motor insurance claim only.
A motor vehicle can be a private car, motorbike or light commercial vehicle which is registered at your home address, used for social and domestic purposes and commuting to your usual place of work, which is constructed for the carriage of passengers and their effects and is adapted to carry not more than seven passengers and does not exceed 3.5 tonnes, of which you are the owner or which you are authorised to drive.
This Personal Vehicle XS policy covers one motor vehicle only and the vehicle must not be insured by a main commercial/fleet insurance policy (if it is, then you must take out an individual Light Commercial Vehicle XS policy).
Cover is provided for the reimbursement of the excess of your motor insurance policy following a settled claim provided for a single motor vehicle whilst being used for:
- social, domestic pleasure and commuting to and from your place of business.
- personal business use by policyholder including business use class 3, which means where you and your named drivers are authorised drivers using the vehicle for business, to solicit orders and deliver pre-purchased goods. This includes sales representatives, consultants and agents and anyone else who uses the vehicle to travel from customer to customer for commercial business use.
You are also covered where you have been unsuccessful in recovering the excess cost from a third party within six months of making a valid claim against them under your main insurance policy. Cover benefit options available range between £250 - £2000.