Car hire excess insurance

RAC Car Hire Excess Insurance covers scratches and other damage to the tyres, roof, body, windscreen and undercarriage of the car. But not all car hire excess insurance policies do. Excess waivers you might be sold at the car rental desk may not cover you for damage to your roof, tyres or windscreens.

You can! With annual RAC Car Hire Excess Insurance, you can get an annual policy that covers you for the whole year, or get daily cover for as many days as you’re hiring your car.

Yes – similar to travel insurance, we offer policies for a number of days, or for a year if you plan on hiring a car more regularly. On an annual (multi-trip) policy, your car rental agreement must not exceed 65 consecutive days.

Travel insurance usually doesn’t include car rental excess as standard, so if your hire car is damaged or stolen you may have to pay a lot of money towards repairing or replacing it. But it’s easy to get cover for rental excess with RAC Car Hire Excess Insurance.

Excess waiver insurance is the same as car hire excess insurance.

When you hire a car, it will usually come with insurance (including a ‘loss or damage waiver’), but this insurance often has a high ‘excess’. In other words, if your hire car is damaged or stolen, you’ll have to pay some money towards the cost of repairing or replacing it. When you have excess waiver insurance or car hire excess insurance, you’re covered for the excess you have to pay if your hire car is damaged or stolen.

Supplemental liability insurance (sometimes called ‘supplementary liability insurance’) tops up your hire car insurance. It means that if you’re in an accident and it’s your fault, you’re covered for the claims the other person in the accident might make. In Europe, car hire insurance usually includes third party liability, so you shouldn’t need supplemental liability insurance – but you might need it in the US and Canada. It’s different from car hire excess insurance, which covers the money you have to pay towards any insurance claims you make if your car is damaged or stolen (the ‘excess’).

No, car hire excess insurance is different to a collision damage waiver (CDW). A CDW means you don’t have to pay the full cost of damage to your hire car if you’re in an accident. Car hire excess insurance covers the excess you pay on your insurance claims (an amount of a claim you have to pay yourself).

You’ll usually have to pay an excess on a CDW. But if you’ve got USA & Canada or Worldwide Plus car hire excess insurance, then you’re covered for the excess on your CDW.

If your hire car is damaged or stolen, or you have to claim on your hire car insurance for some reason, then there will usually be an excess you have to pay. But if you have car hire excess insurance, your insurer will pay the excess for you.

Zero excess means you won’t have to pay any money towards your insurance claim. Most insurance policies have an ‘excess’ – i.e. an amount of money you have to pay yourself when you claim. E.g. if you have £500 excess and damage from a collision costs £1,500, you’ll pay £500 of the damage and the insurance will cover the rest. But if the excess is zero, you don’t have to pay anything towards the claim.

To enquire about a policy, make a claim or cancel an existing policy, you can find our contact details on our existing customer page.

If you are cancelling or returning your hire car early under the advice of a medical professional, your insurance policy will cover you for up to £500, to a maximum of £25 per day. You may be required to provide evidence when you contact us to cancel.

Cover is available for UK residents aged 25-80.

We want complete transparency about our fees so have listed these below:

Amendment fee:   £10

Request duplicate documents:   £10

Cancellation fee:

If the policy hasn’t started, we offer a full refund with no cancellation fee. In the case of an annual policy, if it’s within the 14-day cooling off period, there is also no cancellation fee, provided a vehicle hasn’t been collected.

If you’ve already made a claim on your insurance policy, we will not be able to offer you a refund.

If more than one person plans to drive your rental vehicle, they must be named as additional drivers on the rental agreement. Provided that any additional drivers are named on the rental agreement then they will also be protected against any excess charges associated with loss or damage when they were in charge of a vehicle that you have hired. Our policies provide cover automatically for up to 9 named drivers, provided that they are all named on the rental agreement. For the policy to be effective, the policy holder must be the main hirer of the rental vehicle. The policy will not be effective if the policy holder is a named driver on someone else’s rental agreement.

If your car rental vehicle carries a very high excess which exceeds our single incident limit of £6,000, we will only cover you up to the amount specified on your policy schedule and you may have to pay the difference in the event of a claim.