It can often come as something of a surprise at the last moment when you sign a deal to find that the excess on a policy provided by the rental company is quite high – perhaps as much as several hundred pounds depending on the car and where you are renting.

This has obvious implications as even if something happens which damages the vehicle which was not your fault you can end up paying a considerable amount of money.

To give an example, if you rented a brand new Audi from a dealer which was targeted by thieves who break in and steal a sound system, you could be liable to pay the first £300 towards its replacement if there is an excess of £300 on the policy provided by the rental company.

This is not only extremely frustrating but also potentially very costly. You may find you even end up paying more than it has cost you to rent the car, which is why some people have turned to taking out excess insurance.

Car insurance with liability in a rental deal of course does give you some peace of mind in that you do not necessarily need to overly worry if you do have an accident or even if the car is stolen completely. However, having to pay the extra charge of an excess can seriously hurt your wallet. If something happens you are likely to have to sign a report before the rental car company simply takes off the excess amount from the credit card you provided them with at the start of the rental agreement.

With excess insurance you can simply claim for reimbursement on the policy you have taken out. Note that it’s true that a number of rental car companies will offer their own form of excess insurance at the counter, but you are perfectly entitled to refuse this when you get there, but accept the basic car insurance with liability in the rental deal, having sorted out your own excess protection before you arrived.