Commercial Car Insurance Help

If you are a business owner, they you would know that insuring your commercial car that is used in conducting your everyday business is quite a bit more complicated than it is compared to your private car. The procedure is almost completely different and can be quite confusing to the first timer. The car insurance companies will often value the risk quite a bit differently for commercial vehicles.

The first thing that most business owner will notice is that the premiums for commercial vehicles are often higher, sometimes by as much as 100%. This is not necessarily because the car is put into more risk or is used under heavier conditions, but is to account for any loss-of-income, lawyer fees, business liabilities that may result from the down-time of the car. Depending on the completeness of the coverage, all these items could be accounted for in extra risk to the insurer and thus extra premium to the commercial car owner.

Another way to approach commercial car insurance is to bundle it up in the whole business asset insurance option. Some people would argue that since the car is a part of the business asset that it should also be lumped inside. Admittedly, this can be done and is often one of the ways to get your commercial car or vehicle insurance cheaper. However, there is one very large downside to this, namely the inconvenience of it. If you car were in a small accident where only a small amount of money were needed to repair the car, then breaking the no claim bonus and also paying the access fee for the huge business asset policy might not be wise. In this situation, the vehicles normally reduce in a value quite substantially over the years of use. The reduced value would mean that it would be wiser to keep the no-claim bonus intact and not pay the access, instead taking the company money to repair the car. This of course negates the use of car insurance in the first place.

As with other sorts of car insurance products, you have to sit down and answer some very frank and objective questions. You need to sort out and determine exactly what you commercial car will be doing, who will be driving it, where it will be stored and its importance to the continuity of your business if the car was not there. It is all in the part of determining exactly what type of coverage you will need for your car. It is only when you know the coverage requirements of your car insurance that you can accurately get quotes from the different insurers.

We would recommend that clients look at the large established insurers first. Most of the larger insurers such as AIG, The Hartford, Liberty Mutual etc do offer comprehensive commercial car insurance however don’t offer a quoting service online. This is because of the huge variations of quote available for each business type and activity of the vehicle. The actual work of filling out forms and getting all the different particulars right to get a quote can be quite a tedious task, especially for a business manager who already has too little hours in the day. Sometimes it is best to contract an independent insurance agent and get them to do the legwork.

It is only when you have a few quotes in hand that you should consider moving your search to other smaller or budget insurers. Again, this is going to take time so sometimes the use of an independent insurance agent will be called for. Once you have a list of all your potential insurers, go through each quote and make sure there aren’t any items that are amiss. Find one which you can work with and do a background check to see if they have any performance lapses. Remember that this is you commercial car, and might be more important to you than your personal car. It pays to be careful early on.