Romford: Motor Fleet VS Multiple vehicle policies
Fleet Insurance Brokers: which is better; a motor fleet policy or several single vehicle policies?
I’m often asked to look at insuring a handful of vehicles that are all covered separately with various insurers. Whilst its easy for me to get quotes on the same basis for my clients, they often ask me for (and I sometimes suggest) a motor fleet quote.
A motor fleet policy can start with as little as two vehicles and simply cover all (declared and accepted) vehicles owned or leased by the policyholder under one annually renewable policy.
But which is better? Well, with all these things, it really does depend on your specific needs, which must be explored fully with one of the many fleet insurance brokers out there. However, here are just a few key things I’ve noticed in favour of motor fleet policies over the years:
Cover
Cover is always generous and invariably exceeds that which a single policy offers, as motor fleet insurers often try to add as many ‘bells and whistles’ as they can to their standard offering, such as breakdown, uninsured loss recovery and a number of other added extras.
Price
Dependent on circumstances of course, but the premium for a motor fleet can work out considerably cheaper than insuring the vehicles separately, and I’ve seen this happen several times lately.
Claims impact
If you have a fault-claim on a single vehicle policy, you are more than likely to lose your no claims discount or if it is protected, you will at the very least have your price increased – either way, your premium is going to go up. As motor fleet insurers look at the overall ”claims experience”, the fact that you might have had one claim on a fleet of say 5 vehicles, will stand you in good stead.
Insurer flexibility
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been asked to add a temporary vehicle to a company’s list of vehicles. Its usually a special type vehicle or a really expensive car with a large engine; both of which many single-vehicle insurers have been known to shy away from, but fleet insurers tend to be more flexible – again looking at the bigger picture. To give an example, I had a client that would occasionally hire a cherry picker and similar vehicles that needed cover, and nobody but their motor fleet insurer would entertain adding such a vehicle to a fleet of vans!
At the end of the day, there is no hard and fast rule for how several vehicles must be insured, but hopefully the above will give you some food for thought.
Either way, its definitely worth asking the question to a fleet insurance broker.