|
Premium Search
>
Car Insurance
Information >
Business Car Insurance |
| |
Car Insurance
|
|
Car Insurance for Business Usage
|
|
|
|
Car insurance for business usage – do you
need it?
If you’re running a private home-based
business, chances are that you use your
personal car for business. With business
usage comes increased risk and more time
spent driving, so it would make business
sense to take out either a commercial
insurance policy, or to upgrade your
personal car insurance policy to cover your
vehicle for business usage.
Commercial insurance vs personal
insurance policies
If you are running a delivery business, for
example, commercial car insurance makes a
lot of sense, as you need to protect your
commercial assets from loss or damage during
an accident.
If you only use your personal vehicle for
the occasional client visit, you may find
that upgrading your personal car insurance
policy will suffice. Consult an insurance
broker or a direct insurance company to
establish your exact needs as well as the
exact extent of vehicle cover policies
available to you.
In many cases, however, the premium costs
between personal car insurance rates for
business use and commercial insurance
rates are minimal. Yet as the number of
drivers for your vehicle increases, so will
the cost.
It is critical that you name designated
drivers, especially if they’ll be driving
your personal vehicle for more than 50% of
the time. Although any designated drivers
are usually covered, insuring a primary
driver costs more. Should an investigation
by an insurance company find that the person
driving the car on a regular basis was
under-insured, i.e. he or she was only
insured as an “occasional” driver, the car
insurance company may well refuse to settle
the car insurance claim.
As with most things relating to car
insurance, the marginal savings associated
with under-insuring a driver is never worth
the trouble. Rather be over-insured than
under-insured. If you are using your car for
work purposes without insuring it for this,
you are placing yourself at risk. Lower
insurance limits are not to be recommended,
as you may be sued in your business or
personal capacity, should you seriously
injure another party. Be sure that your
personal liability is kept as low as
possible.
A car insurance policy for business is
similarly priced to a personal car insurance
policy. South African car insurance
companies tend to look at who drives the
vehicle, how far they drive it per day or
per year, etc. They also assess your driving
record and your claims history to determine
your premium. The liability limits on the
car insurance policy also play a big role in
determining the premium cost: the higher
your limits, the higher the premium.
Contact a few established South African
car insurance companies such as
Dial Direct
Insurance,
First for
Women Insurance,
Budget
Insurance Brokers or
Auto&General
for online car insurance quotes. These
Equotes will give you a fair indication of
what you can expect to pay, yet you will be
able to tailor a car insurance policy to
suit your specific needs when one of their
insurance consultants contact you.
|
|
