This blog looks at the importance of European car rental insurance. Europe is one of the most popular holiday destinations for many Brits, and with good reason – it has something for everyone. Whether you’re looking for sun and sangria or a bit of culture, there are a thousand different possibilities open to you from many different countries.
If staying in one place isn’t quite enough for you, though, you might be tempted to hire a car for the duration of your stay, and explore the continent a little bit. If you do, though, you’re going to need to make sure you have adequate car rental insurance, which can often be a complex business due to the massive amount of variety that providers can offer. Unlike countries like the USA and Canada, a basic European car rental insurance policy is usually included in the cost of your hire car, but this is likely to be very basic indeed, and so many people choose to purchase extra cover to protect themselves financially.
Outside of your basic insurance package, many providers offer what’s known as supplemental liability insurance, or SLI. SLI packages generally work by reducing the excess on your policy to a more manageable level. The excess on a car rental insurance policy works in much the same way as it does for any other type of insurance – it’s the amount you pay towards a repair bill before the insurance company starts covering you for the rest of it (that is, if your excess was £100, you’d pay £100 of any repair bill before the insurance company chipped in a penny). Unfortunately for anyone planning on hiring abroad, the excess on European car rental insurance policies is usually set very high, often up to £1000. This is far higher than you’d expect on an equivalent policy in the UK, and represents a serious chunk of money for the average policymaker.
Understandably, then, many people are keen to see this cut down. If you choose to purchase an SLI policy, such as collision damage waiver insurance, you can find that your excess will typically go down the more cover you choose to buy; if you plump for the ‘Super CDW’ cover offered by many insurance providers, you could even see your excess removed entirely.
However, these policies can rapidly become quite expensive, as they are charged on a day to day basis and soon add up to a significant sum. One way to beat this is to book your insurance online before you get to your destination. Most online providers who specialise in European car rental insurance will allow you to book either day by day cover (for the specific amount of time you plan on renting a car) or annual policies that will cover you for twelve months on every hire car you rent in that time.
The latter will generally be cheaper if you plan on renting more than one car in that period or will be renting one car for a sustained length of time (for example, if you’re driving cross-continent), but either way you’ll probably find that booking your European car rental insurance online will save you money, giving you a little bit more to spend on your simple holiday or grand European adventure.