Insurance isn’t much fun, and many of us will only think about it when our renewal comes around. But there are benefits to checking a few things between times – especially when you own a valuable classic and want to ensure your cover is up to snuff.
Here are four things to check on your classic car insurance.
1. Is your agreed value up to date?
The classic car market has seen big shifts in vehicle values in the past couple of years, and certain models are going for 20-30% more than they were 12 months ago.
If you have agreed value on your policy, that value is what you’d be paid in the event of a total loss claim – but if it’s less than the car is actually worth, you’d be underpaid. Keeping your agreed valuation up to date is essential, and you should be able to get this amended mid-term if there are clear reasons.
2. Do you have driving to work cover?
We’re mostly not driving our classics to work (well maybe some of the lucky ones are!), but in the good weather it’s nice to be able to switch it up on impulse. What a lot of drivers might not consider is whether they’ve actually got driving to work (aka commuting) cover on their classic policy.
Commuting cover doesn’t come as standard, so if you didn’t ask for it when you took out your insurance, you might have an issue if you find yourself needing to claim for an incident that’s happened at or on the way to/from work. If in doubt, ask your broker (or us) about it and we can help you determine if it’s something you need.
3. Are you saving as much as you could?
Most classics cost a lot less to insure than a daily drive, albeit performance cars are a different animal. But you could save more, if you’re making the most of your options.
For example, most classic car insurers will discount club members. We offer an up to 15% discount for registered members of a wide range of car clubs – all you need to do is confirm your membership number to us when you get a quote.
And, if you have multiple cars, you can make extra savings by having them on a multi car policy. Typically, multi car customers can save anywhere between 5% and 25% versus having their vehicles on individual policies. You also save time, as all your vehicle renewal dates get wrapped up into one.
4. Do you have salvage retention?
No one wants to think about their car being written off, but if you’d want to retain the salvage if that did happen, you need salvage retention in your policy. So for example, if you had a category S or N write-off, you could keep the salvage, or in a category B write-off you could keep some reusable parts.
We provide salvage retention as standard, but you should check your policy wording to make sure you have this in place as it’s not standard with every provider.
That’s just four things to check with your classic car insurance that will hopefully help you make the most out of this unique type of cover.