Motor Vehicle and Fleet Insurance

Motor Vehicle and Fleet Insurance

Motor vehicle insurance is one of the most sort after insurance products in the insurance market. In recent years, we have seen traditional insurers face new competition from banks, the post office and our largest supermarkets, all competing for your business.

With a large number of competitors, insurers look for a marketing edge to win your business, either by reducing their costs to remain competitive  or providing additional benefits such as lifetime rating guarantee, rental car following an accident and so forth. When you are shopping for motor insurance ensure you compare the benefits, the strength ( ability to pay claims) of the insurer and pricing.

The cheapest price in the market is not always the best option.

Motor Insurance can be generally summarised in the following sections.

Personal Motor Insurance

Generally, a choice of 3 covers are offered in most motor insurance policies:

  1. Comprehensive cover
    This is the broadest level of cover. It covers you for accidental physical loss (including theft) or physical damage to your vehicle. It also covers your legal liability to pay compensation for loss or damage to someone else’s property caused by a motor vehicle accident which is partly or fully your fault.
  2. Third party property damage, fire & theft cover
    The type of policy will cover your vehicle for loss or damage caused by fire or theft. It also extends to cover your legal liability to pay compensation for loss or damage to someone else’s property caused by a motor vehicle accident which is partly or fully your fault.
  3. Third party property damage cover
    This policy only covers your legal liability to pay compensation for loss or damage to someone else’s property caused by a motor vehicle accident which is partly or fully your fault. It does not cover your vehicle.

If you have elected to insure your motor vehicle for comprehensive cover, the insurer will give you the option of market or agreed value.

Market value means the cost to replace your vehicle with a vehicle of the same make, model, age and condition as your vehicle immediately prior to the loss or damage, but excluding costs and charges for vehicle registration, compulsory third party insurance, stamp duty transfer, dealer warranty costs or transfer fees.

Agreed value means the amount which the insurer has agreed to insure your vehicle for and is printed in your current insurance schedule.

Agreed value policies tend to cost a little more than agreed value but provide you with a certainty of what amount you are insured for.

Prestige Motor Vehicle Insurance

The prestige motor policies are aimed at prestige brand vehicles such as BMW, Mercedes Benz, Jaguar, Porsche and other top of the range vehicles. The covers offered are similar to personal motor insurance policies but may include additional benefits that are a broader, i.e. in a Personal Motor Insurance cover, if your vehicle is less than 12 or 24 months old at the time of total loss, the insurer may agree to replace your vehicle with a new replacement. Under a Prestige Motor insurance policy that may extended to a vehicle up to 36 months old.

Other specific benefits under this type of cover may include:

  • Delivery of your vehicle to you after repairs
  • Comprehensive limited kilometres cover for those vehicles driven on weekends only in return for a premium reduction and
  • Automatic temporary hire of a replacement vehicle following an accident

Commercial Motor Insurance

This type of policy offers the same covers as Personal Motor Insurance but specifically focuses on the needs of commercial and business operators such as tradesman utilities, hospitality industry delivery vans and trucks and so forth.

You may find additional benefits specific to these types of occupations included such as signwriting.

Motor Fleet Insurance

Medium to larger businesses that have a fleet of vehicles may be offered a motor fleet policy. This allows all the vehicles to be insured under one policy.

This makes it easier for both the customer and insurer to manage the number of vehicles coming on and off the one policy during the year and identifying any claim trends.

These types of policies will offer a range of additional benefits as opposed to insuring the vehicles individually on a Commercial Motor Policy.

Some of the benefits may include:

  • Total loss of encumbered vehicles
  • Removal and delivery expenses if your vehicle suffers loss or damage
  • Retrieval costs if your vehicle unintentionally becomes immobilised
  • Expediting expenses such as immediate repair costs
  • Employee’s personal property
  • Automatic additions of vehicles
  • No fault excess

How do we add value as your Insurance Broker?

Irrespective of whether you have one vehicle with us or hundreds, our goal is to ensure we understand your business, find out your drivers history and work with you to ensure we obtain the best coverage we can for you in the market. This may be price driven or it may be based on who is the best company to handle your fleet of vehicles and help you better manage your fleet so in the long term you have a more profitable business.

If a claim occurs, we will register the claim for you with the insurer and facilitate the transition to having the vehicle back on the road as quickly as possible.

Contact Us

Shop Insurance – shopinsurance.com.au – Business Insurance for Shops is a division of Steadfast Eastern Insurance Brokers P/L AFSL 449768 ABN 13 166 553 671.