For numbers of organisations, fleet insurance might prove to be invaluable. That might be the case both in terms of cost-effectiveness and administrative ease.

Here is GSI Insurance’s quick overview of fleet insurance and the types of cover it might be able to provide.

A quick sketch

Many companies own and operate vehicles. In some cases, that may be something as simple as a company car for the business owner and perhaps three or four service vans.

In other situations, the fleet may contain hundreds of vehicles including cars, heavy goods vehicles, specialist lifting trucks and small vans etc.

Under the law, any vehicle used on the public road must be covered by at least third party liability insurance. That cover must offer unlimited financial protection.

For many business owners and fleet managers though, third party liability cover is considered, in itself, inadequate. Typically they will look for some form of more fully comprehensive cover in order to protect them, for example, against the costs of needing to repair one of their vehicles should it be involved in an accident.

Companies typically may need to choose between taking out an insurance policy per vehicle and looking for cover for their entire fleet. Fleet insurance cover is available from specialist providers.

Individual vehicle versus fleet insurance cover

There are typically two significant reasons why someone might choose fleet insurance:

• administratively, it is typically far easier to deal with a single policy, a single provider and a universal policy renewal date, than to have to do so on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis;
• it may be more cost-effective in that you should be able to exercise a far greater degree of commercial leverage with insurers when discussing cover for all your vehicles, than if you were negotiating with lots of different insurance providers on individual vehicles. That might typically bring down your cost of cover per vehicle.

What constitutes a fleet?

There is no fixed answer to this one, as individual fleet insurance providers may differ in their definitions. However, some providers may offer:

• fleet cover even if your fleet is relatively small, with perhaps three vehicles as a minimum;
• cover for highly diverse types of vehicles. As mentioned above, that might include cars and commercial vehicles plus private and business use.

Cover

As always, we need to make the point that the only way to be sure what a policy is offering by way of cover is to read it carefully or to take qualified advice. Typically though, if you have a suitable policy, it might provide:

• the statutory unlimited third party legal liability cover;
• more comprehensive cover for your vehicles, if required, to protect your financial interests against the consequences of things such as accidents, theft and fire etc.
• cover for any driver owning an appropriate licence (note that there may be some special conditions in some policies relating to minimum ages or certain types of serious driving convictions on a licence).

Summary

Typically, fleet owners and operators have very different operating environments from one to another. Therefore, fleet insurance needs to be flexible if it is to provide appropriate protection.

We can assist you in understanding the types of cover that might be applicable in your unique circumstances. Do please contact us for a further discussion.