Van insurance news roundup: 7 days ending 9th Sept 2012:
September can be a rather hectic month for van owners if they have friends of family attending university, but don’t be tempted to just hand over the keys to that student!
This week saw one of the biggest names in van insurance cover warning off van owners from just lending out their vehicles to new or returning university students. Sure, you can go ahead and lend the van to your favourite student, but if he or she isn’t on your your policy, you could be in a world of hurt if there’s an accident – to the point where you could have your insurance invalidated!
Instead, Swinton said, you should go along with the student – make sure you’re the one doing the driving – and help them move. It’s not exactly a treat to help someone move, especially if it’s a long journey to university and back with a load of personal effects, but if the alternative is risking the validity of your commercial van insurance cover, it’s definitely worth the trip.
If you really don’t want to do the driving – or help with the heavy lifting – you can always add the student to your own policy. Even if the student has comprehensive car insurance of their own, there’s no guarantee that they will be insured to drive your van as a third party without checking the details of both your cover and the student’s.
You can go ahead and add drivers to an insurance policy, which will enable the student to drive the vehicle without risking invalidation. However, insurers are still charging quite a bit for cover, but more news this week revealed that one motor broker has decided to join an insurance comparison site, adding a number of its van insurance products to the aggregrator.
Four new van insurance specialists will join the insurance site, thanks to the deal struck between it and the broker, and increasing competition in a sector that is in dire need of more. Not sure if you’ve actually looked at the average cost of cover recently, but it’s quite dear indeed, so when it comes to driving down prices, the more rivals operating in the insurance market the better.