If you're renting cars regularly, whether for business or personal reasons, then annual car hire excess insurance could save you a lot of time and money.
What does it do? When you rent a car, you'll almost certainly want to ensure that you have reasonable insurance cover in place.
This cover would protect you from the potentially ruinous costs of an accident that resulted in you injuring a third party or damaging their property.
Almost as serious could be the costs to you if you damaged the rental car and did not have sufficient insurance to cover it.
So, if you have taken out appropriate insurance, why is more needed? The problem is that the basic forms of insurance provided by a car rental company will usually carry with them something called 'excess'.
The excess is a financial amount that you the renter would have to pay towards the costs of an accident, and it's often set between 500 and 1500 pounds.
It works like this - if the policy has 750 pounds excess and you have an accident that involves damage claims to a total of 1500 pounds, you will receive a charge to your credit card of 750 pounds from the rental company.
If the accident damage cost 400 pounds, the rental company would charge the entire 400 pounds to your card.
Many renters feel uneasy at this sort of financial exposure.
If you don't like the sound of it either, you have two possibilities to reduce or eliminate the excess.
The first of these is to buy additional insurance cover from the car rental company to in effect 'top-up' your insurance.
For a price they will agree to cover any excess charges.
Although workable, this top-up excess insurance will usually be several times more expensive when purchased from a car rental company than if purchased elsewhere.
Excess charges This leads to the second option and annual car hire excess insurance.
There are specialist insurance providers selling over the Internet who will offer an annual insurance policy to cover excess charges from car rental companies.
It works simply.
You purchase an annual car hire excess insurance policy from them.
Should you subsequently have an accident in a rented car and be charged excess by the car rental company, you will be able to claim this back from your direct policy.
Not only is this very significantly cheaper than purchasing the same insurance from the rental company but it offers an additional advantage.
As it is an annual policy (though the specialist insurance providers will also sell daily cover) it covers you, the policyholder, for any rented car driven during the lifetime of the policy.
This could save lots of time at the car collection desk negotiating insurance terms with car rental companies - a real bonus for regular renters.
Annual car hire excess insurance will have its own terms and conditions and some specialist vehicles such as sports or very high value vehicles may not be covered.
This is unlikely to affect the vast majority of renters and it may well be worth investigating this option further if you're looking for the best deals.