When Should You Be Making A Car Insurance Claim?

If you have just suffered the misfortune of having been out shopping only to come back and find that someone has hit your car while you were away, you’ll now be faced with the dilemma of whether or not you should be making a car insurance claim.

Before you pick up the phone and make that call however, you may want to consider the following:

Excess

Even if your car insurance policy provider says you have tell them about every single accident that happens to your car, the first thing you need to be asking yourself following a minor accident is: “will the cost of repairing my car be more or less than the excess sum on my car insurance policy?”.

If the cost of repairing your car is going to be less than, or approximately the same as, the amount of your excess on your car insurance policy, there’s little point phoning the car insurance company as they won't be paying for the repairs in any event – you will!

Increase in insurance policy

The second thing you need to be asking yourself is whether or not making a claim will cause you to (a) lose your no claims bonus; or (b) mean you have to pay more for your car insurance next year because you made a claim this year? In most cases the answer to these questions is going to be “yes”.

So, now you need to decide whether the cost of repairing your car is going to be more or less than the increase in your car insurance policy. If you think the cost of repairing your car, after deduction of the excess, is going to be less than the increase in your car insurance policy because you have either lost your no claims or made a claim against your car insurance provider, then you may just want to pay for the repairs yourself.

Personal injury

The only time you should never consider the monetary value of the damage done to car against any possible increase in your car insurance premium is in the event that you suffer any personal injury due to the accident. In such a case you should always make a claim against your insurance, even if the personal injury seems mild at the time, as personal injuries caused by car accidents, such as ‘whip lash’ have a tendency to take a long time to get better and could cause you to have to take time off work, etc. If you have not made a claim against your car insurance provider, then you may lose certain rights you would otherwise have been entitled to here – so it’s not worth taking the risk over this just to save yourself a few pounds.