The ‘excess’ is an aspect of the car rental insurance provided by car rental companies that may end up costing you a lot of money over and above the rental price. The way you can protect yourself from these additional charges is called excess insurance.

The excess on a car rental insurance policy

When you are driving your rented car, you probably would like to believe that your insurance cover offers you total protection against all eventualities.

Unfortunately, that may not be the case. Whether the insurance was included in the rental price or you purchased it separately from the rental company (as is typically the case in the USA) the chances are that it will contain an excess set between £500 and £1500. Of course this can vary among insurers.

This means that in the event of a claim (such as if you have damaged the rental car in some way) the rental company’s insurance will only pay out after you have paid the ‘first part’ of the claim.

In other words, if you have a claim totalling £800 and an excess of £1000, you will typically find the £800 billed to your credit card by the rental company. Had the claim been for £1200, the charge to your card may have been £1000 and only £200 will be met by the rental company’s insurance policy.

Excess insurance

If the thought of this doesn’t exactly make you feel comfortable, you can pay the rental company for extra insurance. They may call this ‘top-up protection’ or ‘Super CDW’. For the additional cost they may agree to reduce or remove the excess amount.

Their option here is typically more expensive than the alternative offered by the specialist Internet providers of car rental insurance. These providers offer policies typically called ‘excess insurance’ that will reimburse you for any excess charges billed to your credit card by the rental company following an accident and related claim.

This may be a good idea, particularly given the harsh reality that following an accident you may have little or no control over who is assessing the damage to the vehicle or who is making the repairs and at what cost.

The internet-based specialist providers of rental car insurance

There may be two other significant advantages to purchasing excess cover from the specialists:

• their policies typically may be purchased for a period of up to 12 months and provide cover to you the policyholder rather than a specific vehicle rental – this means that they may cover any vehicle you rent during the period (subject to terms and conditions);
• you may find that the rental company’s insurance also excludes several areas of the vehicle from its cover – these may be covered automatically by your excess policy.

You can find out more about the benefits of excess insurance by checking the website of a specialist provider.