Car Insurance Excess

What is Insurance Excess?

The “Excess” that car insurance companies talk about is the amount of money you have to pay to the car insurer in the case of an accident or claim.

If your excess is quoted at £250 then this is the amount that will be deducted from any claim you make.

By raising your Excess amount to £350 for example, you can reduce the cost of your annual car insurance premium. The reason for this is if you have a small accident or claim, the insurer will be confident that you will not make a claim because the cost of repair is likely to be around the same (or less) than the excess amount. This way, they incur no costs in repairs and subsequently your next annual premium is not increased and could possibly be decreased.

Be aware that if you do have a small accident where both parties decide not to make an insurance claim, your insurance company will not be aware of this if you do not tell them. Powerseeker does not recommend hiding any information from the car insurance provider however by keeping quiet about such trivial accidents may help your annual premium to stay lower.

If you reduce the amount of excess against a car insurance policy, then it is likely the cost of the policy (or the premium) will increase. You can confidently play around with changing the excess amount to arrive at the best solution for you.

View the UK Car Insurance Guide