Businesses Fleet Insurance (What you need to know)
Whether you run a busy team of delivery drivers or you have a small fleet of company cars for your sales reps, it’s probably fair to say that your business relies heavily on your fleet of vehicles.
That makes it important to ensure you can keep your fleet going if any of your vehicles are involved in an accident. With that in mind, we’re looking at why it’s important to make sure your business fleet insurance policy is tailored to your own business needs.
How many vehicles make a fleet?
In most cases you will find that a fleet will start from as low as two vehicles, and then can range into the hundreds and even thousands!
The amount of vehicles covered will vary from insurer to insurer, so it’s always wise to use a reputable fleet insurance broker to ensure that you get the right cover.
What types of vehicles can be included in a fleet?
This will all depend on the vehicles you are looking to include in your fleet, there are specialist insurer that will deal specifically in certain types of fleet insurance, such as van fleet, HGV fleet or taxi fleet insurers.
However, most insurers will be flexible and accommodate a range of vehicles for fleet insurance, allowing you to have a mix of vehicle types that make up your fleet such as vans, cars, minibuses and a variety of truck types.
When taking out a fleet insurance policy, you will need to make sure you check the vehicle exclusions, some specialist vehicles may be excluded from your fleet insurance policy, such as fork lift trucks, tractors and dumper trucks.
Be sure to clearly specify what vehicles and how many you need insured.
How would your business be affected without fleet insurance?
Taking out the right level of fleet insurance cover for your company means thinking carefully about the impact on your company of one or more of your vehicles being out of action.
- What would happen, for example, if one of your fleet of courier vans was written off in an accident?
- Would you still have the capacity to maintain your current number of deliveries, or would your bottom line take a hit until the vehicle could be replaced?
- Choosing the right level of insurance cover means identifying the worst case scenarios and ensuring you have adequate protection in place.
Telematic Fleet Insurance
A growing trend with business fleets is to have them fitted with telematic devices (or black boxes) to monitor driver performance to improve business safety and efficiency.
These telematic devices are can calculate premiums based off of driver performance, feeding data back so that the business can assess the performance of their drivers.
How to cut costs for fleet insurance
Insuring a fleet can often be a significant expense for businesses, but there are certain policies and safeguards you can set in place to help reduce the insurance premiums, such as:
- Implement driver policies for risk assessment and risk management.
- Anyone under the age of 25 on the policy is likely increase the cost so avoid this where possible.
- Some fleet insurers will offer discounts if you have dashboard cameras installed in the vehicles.
- Drivers that have taken an advanced driving course or similar kind of formal assessment can help reduce costs.
Get the right insurance for your fleet
Business fleet insurance applies to two or more vehicles for business use, and the type of policy you need depends on the nature of your business.
Your policy will need to be tailored to the size of your fleet and what you use it for. You can also choose between insuring named drivers only or insuring any of your drivers to operate any of the vehicles in your fleet.
Whichever policy you choose, we can also include public and employer’s liability insurance and all other aspects of business insurance so that you have all your business insurance taken care of in one place.
When it comes to fleet insurance, it’s vital to make sure you take out a policy that’s specific to the kind of business you operate.
If you’re a taxi company, for example, then the right taxi fleet insurance will make sure you’re covered for the specific services you offer, such as public or private hire.
A specialist minibus fleet insurance policy offers slightly different cover from bus and coach insurance, while van fleet insurance is different again.
If your business uses a fleet of vans, you’ll need a van fleet insurance policy that takes into account what your vehicles are used for.
For example, if you operate delivery vans, you’d need a courier fleet insurance policy alongside insurance for goods in transit as well as for the usual vehicle insurance requirements, such as windscreen and breakdown cover.
HGV fleet insurance is different again, and could include cover such as hauliers liability insurance and HGV breakdown.
Insure your fleet now
Contact us today to discuss business fleet insurance with one of our friendly fleet insurance brokers, who’ll be able to answer all your questions on which policy is right for your business.
Give us a call on on 0800 078 7003 (or 0300 600 0603) or complete our Get a Quote form for a no-obligation quote.
