11 January 2023

Which Vehicles Types can Excess Insurance Cover?

We investigate how excess insurance policies can cover different types of vehicles

Whilst hire excess insurance is often referred to when speaking about rental cars, there are other vehicles that can be covered by it. We list the different vehicles that you can insure so you don’t miss a trick when hiring something other than a car!

Vehicles of up to 9 seats

The majority of car hire excess insurers on our comparison engine cover vehicles with up to 9 seats (including the drivers seat). This is ideal if you are hiring a small vehicle all the way up to a 7 seater or 9 seater. It’s particularly handy if you have a big family or are holidaying friends or even just want some extra luggage room!

This category also covers vehicles that the car hire companies sometimes call minibuses - as long as they have 9 seats or less. So if you’re hiring a 9 seat minibus make sure you select the option of 'Vehicles of up to 9 seats' from the drop down menu when going through the quote engine.

Remember that the car hire excess insurers judge the size of vehicles on the number of seats not the number of people you will have in the vehicle.

Minibuses up to 15 seats

If your minibus is over 9 seats, but up to 15 you can use our standard car hire excess insurance engine for minibuses and select 'Minibus up to 15 seats' from the drop down menu on the first page of the comparison.

One of our companies cover minibuses that have 10-15 seats under their specific minibus excess insurance policy. This policy can only cover hires that are in the UK but it’s a great option if a group of you are going away and want to travel together.

Car club cars

A number of our car hire excess insurers will also cover cars that you have hired through a car club. As the agreement is slightly different than normal car hires, car club vehicles do require a specific excess insurance policy.

As with normal car hire excess insurance, these policies will cover damage to areas such as the wheels, tyres, glass, underbody and roof of the vehicle. These are also often parts that are excluded from car club’s own insurance policies!

Run your quote as normal and then use the Car Club filter to see appropriate policies.

Garage Loan Cars

Much like car club vehicles, garage loan vehicles require a more specific policy. If your vehicle is off the road you may be given a garage loan car, however these do tend to come with a hefty excess as well as having certain areas excluded from cover.

Some of our excess insurers will cover your garage loan vehicle’s excess plus additional areas. So it’s well worth exploring. You can find out more about these policies, how they work and how to run a quote here.

Vans

We have a couple of different insurers who will cover van hires. They will only cover hires in the UK or Europe so sadly these policies do not apply to the US or elsewhere in the world. Claim rates can be high with van hires due to drivers who may not be used to the size of the vehicle. Wing mirrors and roofs are often damaged so excess insurance is must! Find out more about van hire excess insurance and run a quote here.

Motorhomes

Like vans, there tends to be a high claim rate from motorhome hires. This is because a motorhome is a much larger vehicle than many people are used to driving on a daily basis. A motorhome hire excess insurance policy is pretty essential unless you are happy to accept and pay the excess amount on the vehicle should there be any damage.

The motorhome hire excess insurance policies will cover reversing accidents, these are often excluded from motorhome collision damage waiver policies that are provided by hire companies.