In most countries when driving a personal vehicle one must have insurance and the same is true when driving a hire car. Most car hire companies offer some form of basic daily car hire insurance as part of the rental package.
The amount and type of cover provided varies from offer to offer, country to country and rental company to rental company. It may or may not include cover for a range of risks including basic third party, fire, theft, and Collision Damage Waiver (CDW) vehicle accident insurance. A hirer should always check carefully what is included and whether or not the daily car hire insurance offers maximum cover levels and exclusions that are suitable for their needs.
It may also be good practice to consider carefully the excess on the policy. The excess is that proportion of a claim cost that the rental company would expect the hirer to pay in the event of an accident or similar. If the policy carries excess of say 500, then the hirer would need to pay personally for the first 500 of any claim.
Whatever the inclusions or exclusions, many car rental companies will call this basic level of cover the daily car hire insurance.
It is not unusual for hirers to feel that they require additional insurance to cover those risks, exclusions and excesses that are not within the framework of the basic insurance provided by the car hire company. In some cases they may also wonder whether or not they could obtain better insurance for a lower price.
It is possible to obtain daily car hire insurance not only from the car rental company, but also from some specialist insurance companies. These policies may provide the policyholder/car renter with daily care hire cover that is broader that that available from a car hire company including coverage of things such as the excesses and exclusions. This would need to be carefully checked and compared with the car hire company's offerings as would any apparent cost advantages.
In theory many of the standard insurance features included in the normal car hire can be replaced by equivalents purchased directly from insurance companies, and the car hire company's offerings can be waived at rental time upon production of an appropriate insurance certificate by the renter. In practice this may not always be possible and not all car hire companies in all circumstances would offer cost reductions for private insurance cover of the renter. Special offer deals or 'insurance included in the total price' rates may all be fixed and price reductions not achievable. This should be checked in advance with the rental company to ensure they will accept it and that it will offer a cost saving as a result.
Most car hire companies will also offer 'top-up' insurance to increase the cover provided as part of their 'in the price' deals. Confusingly this is sometimes also called 'additional daily car hire insurance'.
If a renter holds daily car hire insurance obtained from a specialist insurance company and there is an accident or other claim, normally the car hire company will work directly with the insurance company to settle the claim and payments. In some cases though the care hire company may still charge some costs directly to the renter's credit card and this will need to be considered in terms of credit card limits etc.
Like all insurance products, daily car hire insurance policies should be checked carefully to ensure that their cover will provide the peace of mind required by the inPidual hirer.
Version 1.0 Released 05 February 2009
