There are more signs than ever that UK shopping habits have changed as many individuals prefer the comfort of their own home to the hustle and bustle of the High Street, when they can stretch their budgets to treat themselves to the occasional gift, of course.
As such, there is a greater demand on the home delivery network, both from online companies and your big brands who are also finding that a well-crafted shop outlet on the internet is well worth investing in.
This has led to a whole host of secondary businesses – possibly start-ups who have worked in the courier trade before – encouraging people to start up their own home delivery services. A van, a place to perhaps store goods overnight and a decent communication platform – how easy could a self-employed business get?
For a start, there are a whole host of commercial vehicle cover policies that may or may not suit your business and could all, theoretically, fit under the umbrella of courier van insurance. But there are distinct differences that separate each of the documents that going online to compare van insurance to see if price could be your staff and guide may not immediately identify.
Higher voluntary excess will deliver cheaper van insurance premiums
And then there’s the adjustments you can make to one or all of your premiums, such as high excess/low cover, whereby if you agree to cover a larger portion of the bill before the van insurance company has to contribute, it could save you a small fortune. Why?
If the minimum excess is £50 and you agree to proceed with your van insurance quote on that basis, the broker or comparison website you use will factor in that, in the event of an accident, they are going to foot the majority of the bill. Therefore, by extracting more from your premium they are covering themselves for that eventuality.
If, however, you decide to increase that excess to say around £200, it is beneficial to the broker in two ways. Firstly, and most obviously, they will not have to find so much of the bill as you have agreed to pay the first £200. But what really works in their favour is the fact that, if a repair bill was £250 you, as the policy holder, are a lot less inclined to claim on your insurance, as you would be paying £200 out to get £50 back and losing your no claims bonus (providing it wasn’t protected), to boot. However if you’d opted for the £50 minimum excess, you may be tempted to claim on your van insurance because you would be getting £200 back off the insurers towards the bill, which is possibly more than you’d save on your no claims bonus.
So, in the next article, we will move on to the differences between goods in transit, courier insurance and even touch on Bonding, which you may need to look at if you’re starting to build a courier fleet and employing several staff.
