Spinning Your Wheels? – Things to Consider When Choosing an Insurance Broker for your Motor Fleet Cover

Motor insurance is an inescapable expense for a business that relies on any sort of vehicle to conduct their business. Vehicles can often present a bigger liability for your business than you would expect, making them an insurance challenge. Brokers can definitely help in simplifying this journey, but how? What should you be looking out for when considering an insurance broker?

Cost vs benefit – do you even need the broker?

Motor fleet is an insurance product where there are multiple self-service online portals available from reputable insurers. When gaining a quote through these sites, you don’t need to involve a broker at all. Just as you do for your home or pet insurance, you input all the information yourself and (usually) can gain and accept a quote then and there. This option often comes with a cost-saving too, as this process involves a lot of automated processes for the insurer and will not include any commission or fee paid to a broker.

Where this can be an issue is where you have a more complicated or large motor fleet to insurer. These systems often are made for the more ‘straightforward’ policies, where a lot of the decisions can be taken out of human hands. However, if your fleet doesn’t fit under this narrow banner, you may encounter issues quickly. You could encounter problems with these portals if you;

• have a large fleet (say more than 10 vehicles),
• have any specialist or modified vehicles in your fleet,
• transport hazardous materials,
• are a taxi company,
• are a self-drive hire company,
• have any electric vehicles or motorbikes in your fleet, or…
• have a lot of claims (as a few, of many, examples).

This is one of the places where a broker can help in presenting your risk to insurers directly and paint your business in a preferable light. They can use their expertise to talk to an insurer directly and get you the quote you need, allowing you to focus on running your business and letting you avoid any computer-says-no frustrations!

Servicing & Claims

Administering a fleet insurance policy can often be very time consuming and frustrating. Issues can include adding and removing vehicles and drivers, chasing up and inputting licences, updating insurers on any modifications, carefully assessing every minor scrape that happens day to day.

Again, this is where a broker can really show their worth and help you with this. Ask your broker how they would intend to handle these tasks. Do they have standard turnaround times you can expect from them to get these completed with the insurer? How do they want notification of these updates, by phone, email or online? Which would you prefer? Can they take any of these tasks off your desk altogether? How are they using the latest tech to expediate the process for you?

The same applies for their claims handling. How do they approach these? Will they notify on your behalf to your insurer or will this be entirely left up to you? Can they get you access to any products that offer a specialist claims service, for example, a courtesy car?

Consider what administrative services the broker can offer you and how that may be of use to you.

Consider Your Options

What can your broker tell you about their Motor Fleet experience and capabilities and how will that be relevant to your policy? Have they ever arranged a policy for a business in your industry before? If so, what can they tell you about it? If not, how are they going to go about it for you? If you have any difficult or technical questions on your policy now is the perfect time to ask, see what they say and what you think of their answer! Do they have client testimonials or, better still, any reviews on PomeloScan?