More and more citizens of the Russian Federation understand that car insurance is that necessary service, using which, you can protect yourself from the unpleasant consequences of sloppy driving on the roads. Like it or not, everyone wants to secure their future. Confidence in insurance companies is slowly growing, and with it the number of insured vehicles increases annually.
Consider what types of car insurance are today, and dwell in more detail on voluntary CASCO insurance.
Types of Car Insurance
Insurance can be divided into compulsory and optional. Mandatory insurance is compulsory motor third-party liability insurance, which is popularly called “auto-citizen”. To voluntary (optional) insurance is such a type as CASCO insurance.
This article will focus on the second type of car insurance.
If "auto-citizen" implies insurance of driver liability to third parties, then CASCO insurance allows you to compensate for damage caused to your car as a result of the actions of third parties. That is, this type of insurance does not imply protection of the driver’s liability, as well as the life and property of those who are in the car.
What can be hull insurance?
This type of insurance may include covering the risks of theft and damage (referred to as “full CASCO”) or only in case of damage to the car (partial CASCO).
Full and partial CASCO insurance differ in the amount of insurance payment. Unsurprisingly, insurers want to protect themselves in the event of a car theft, so that funds will be reserved for reimbursing the cost of the vehicle, if such an event occurs, and payment must be made.
Short review of offers in the Russian market
There are many companies that provide CASCO insurance in Russia. It would seem that if there are a large number of organizations that provide similar services, all conditions for healthy competition are created. In this case, it would be logical if the prices of insurance payments were approximately equal.
But in reality, the cost of insurance in different organizations has a significant difference. At the same time, you should not blame companies for an unreasonable approach to pricing their own services. In this case, it is rather related to the insurance program after all, each organization draws up a contract in its own way, adjusting the list of insurance risks and the conditions for paying compensation.
In order to see these differences, it is necessary to take an agreement with the insurance company and carefully read it. The main differences are as follows:
- the presence of a franchise and its type;
- the provision of additional services;
- Departure of the emergency commissioner;
- list of required documents;
- reduction or no insurance amount after the occurrence of the insured event and payment of compensation.
There may be other differences in the offers, as well as the terms of insurance contracts.
Insurance policy
Under insurance rules are understood the terms, obligations and rights that are indicated in the insurance contract.
Each company has its own CASCO insurance rules, which correspond to its policy of functioning in the market. However, they should not contradict the legislation of the Russian Federation.
In addition to the name of the insurance company (insurer) and f. and. about.of an individual or the name of the organization that insures your car (policyholder), the CASCO insurance contract includes the name of the company, model, year of manufacture, state numbers, vehicle body and engine numbers.
Also usually in the annexes to the contract indicates the current technical condition of the car. In the interests of the insured immediately show all the malfunctions, scratches, defects that are present to the representative of the insurer. Otherwise, referring to the CASCO insurance rules, the insurance company may refuse to pay insurance compensation. Sometimes a vehicle is photographed with a fixation of its condition in order to avoid future conflicts.
Pay attention to the list of insured risks.
The CASCO insurance conditions must contain a list of those risks, in the event of damage upon which, the insurer will carry out insurance compensation. Reading this list, you need to be very careful.
The types of incidents that are considered the occurrence of the insured event are indicated. They can be different: from a simple scratch to accidents, after which the car can no longer move independently. Not every insurance company is ready to make a payment if someone went near the car and scratched it.
It is worth considering the insurance of additional risks. In addition to accidents that occurred due to the fault of another driver, there can be other events that, when they occur, damage the technical or visual condition of the car.
For example, some companies include the risk of damage to car parts due to a sewerage breakthrough in a parking lot. This makes CASCO car insurance more expensive compared to a more meager list of insurance risks.
The cost depends on the age of the car.
A lot depends on the car itself, and more precisely, on its cost and year of manufacture. If the car is more than 7 years old, then there may be problems with finding the insurance company that will undertake to insure it. At the same time, the cost of insurance payment will be an order of magnitude higher than for a car with an age of 1-2 years.
Be careful, some insurance companies prescribe in the contract a condition that allows them not to indemnify if during the period of its validity the car has left the age category for which it was insured.
Expensive cars are harder to insure
It should be understood that CASCO insurance, the cost of which is expensive for expensive cars, is an overwhelming obligation for many insurers. There are not many companies that will insure Bentley or Bugatti.
Mandatory CASCO insurance conditions contain a list of required conditions for the payment of insurance compensation. Very often, insurance companies go to tricks that allow them to not pay.
Pay attention to the actions that must be taken after the insured event has occurred. What to do if it is not possible to call the emergency commissioner within 15 minutes, how to fix damage to the car and the like.
Remember that if the driver was intoxicated or in violation of the rules of the road, then no one will make any payments to him.
Reduction of the insured amount by the amount of damage paid
Another feature that distinguishes between types of hull insurance. Car insurance is always carried out for the amount that you or the insurer rated your car (there are different options, depending on the contract). This amount is called the insurance amount, and within it the company will be liable to you for compensation for damage in the event of an insurance event.
Insurance companies can offer you two options for conditions in this matter: whether or not the amount by which the car was insured will decrease, if the insurer has already paid you compensation for any insured event.
Calculation example
When the variant when insurance amount will decrease, the calculation of insurance compensation will look like this.
Suppose you insured your car for 200,000 rubles. There was a small accident and the car appeared damaged in the amount of 40,000 rubles. The insurance company paid them to you. From this moment, your vehicle will be insured not for two hundred thousand rubles, as originally, but for 160 000 rubles.
There is another option, when the insured amount will not decrease upon payments, but during the validity of one insurance contract. Usually such a service is present in expensive insurance.
About franchise
There are people who are unhappy with having drawn up a CASCO insurance contract. Their reviews are so eloquent that the desire to insure a car may disappear.
If you start to understand in more detail, it turns out that they were simply chasing cheap insurance, not thinking about why one company can afford it and another does not. And when they get into an accident, then they just do not get reimbursed, they say about some kind of franchise.
It is this franchise to a greater extent that can affect the cost of insurance. The market standard will be its fluctuation from 0% to 2%.
What is it for? Using a franchise, the insurer tries to minimize the risk of paying insurance compensation due to minor damage to the car, which are common enough. This works as follows: if you insured a car in the amount of 100,000 rubles, and in the contract you set a deductible of 2%, this means that if the damage is up to 2000 rubles. the insurance company will not reimburse you.
The higher the percentage of the deductible, the cheaper the CASCO car insurance will cost. In principle, this is correct, otherwise the emergency commissioner would have to travel absolutely to all incidents that occur with the car.
When choosing an insurance company, be alert
The most important thing when choosing an insurance company is to always pay attention to how much it already operates on the market, whether there are positive reviews about its work, how often it makes insurance claims, the level of its reliability. The price of insurance should never be put in the forefront. There are too many cases when the car was insured “cheaper”, and in the event of an accident people were left face to face with their problems, without any payments from the insurance company.
