There can be certain situations when it is difficult to establish whether you should be using your own personal car insurance policy or relying on business related cover to ensure you get adequate protection in the event of an incident or accident occurring.
Business Car Insurance explained
A standard car insurance policy that many of us have covers you for driving your car for social, domestic or personal use, so you can use your car to visit friends, go on a shopping trip or take a leisurely drive out for the day. These policies also cover you if you use the car to commute to and from a regular place of work and basically take the same journey on a daily basis and park in the same place every day while you are at work.
Different destinations
If your work takes you to several different offices or work sites on a regular basis or you regularly cover several hundreds of miles per week for business purposes then it is quite likely that you would be considered to be in need of a business car insurance policy in order to insure you are driving fully covered for any eventuality.
Black or white
Most of us know that business car insurance is more expensive than a standard private driver policy but the situation is very often black or white, meaning you often know that you should have business car insurance and if you check the terms and conditions you can quickly establish the criteria and see if you are falling foul of the terms of your policy. It is not worth being tempted to stretch the truth or hope that no one finds out how you are using your vehicle, as the worst case scenario is that your insurance could be invalidated if you are found to have not given factual information about your use of the car.
Company car or commercial car insurance?
There is a difference between business car insurance and commercial car insurance. Motorists who use their car for commercial purposes such as a taxi driver or a delivery driver, will need proper commercial car insurance and a company car should be insured by the company or whoever leases the vehicle to them, but a car that is used for business purposes from time to time is not considered the same as a company car and can be insured with a business element included, which may work out cheaper anyway.
Cutting the cost of insurance
Having established the type of insurance you need to be legal, you then need to try and keep the cost down as much as possible. One good way of doing this is to use some comparison sites and let them do the legwork for you by getting specific quotes based on your actual circumstances and intended use. The more specific information you can give such as mileage you are likely to cover will have an impact on the final price of the premium and also choosing the car they want to insure carefully beforehand will help, as there are over 50 different insurance groups, so driving a car in one of the lower groups will be much cheaper than a model that is considered riskier and therefore more expensive to insure.
You can shop around and get the best quote, which is far better than just accepting the first quote you get from an insurance broker, but there is no substitute for being considered a careful driver in order to get the price of insurance down. Insurers reward careful drivers so try to protect your good record and always consider whether to make an insurance claim for a small amount, as this will always have an impact on the price when you come to renew. No one wants to pay more than they have to for car insurance but remember that the cheapest quote is not always the best for your needs, so consider all options before you finally settle on a deal.
Gillian Kearney has extensive experience in auto insurance. Her articles mainly appear on auto and money saving blogs. Visit the Monkey website for more information.