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What You Need to Know About Temporary Car Insurance

Temporary Car Insurance: An Increasingly Necessary Level of Coverage

Temporary auto coverage is an effective way to get the benefits of a long-term, permanent liability coverage plan, including coverage of such incidents as damage and theft, without the hard commitment of buying a long-term plan and committing yourself to coverage that may not fit your situation a few months down the road.

Again, temporary coverage is obviously meant for using a car for a short amount of time. This type of coverage is most often useful in situations where you are going on a business trip or vacation, testing out a new car on the lot, or borrowing someone else's car to drive for a temporary period without having to be added to their insurance plan (which takes a long time and a lot of paperwork). Since this is a temporary type of policy, you can expect coverage to last for roughly a month, but the exact period of time will vary from policy to policy. Be sure to do your homework on this!

Other Temporary Policy Benefits

Again, a temporary car insurance plan will cover all the same eventualities that are covered under the traditional type of policy, but you'll of course be avoiding the costs that usually come with a long-term plan. Very importantly, this temporary car insurance will not have any kind of effect on your no-claims bonuses or safe driver discounts that often exist with a long-term policy. Also, car rental companies tend to offer this type of coverage rather than dealing with the cost and commitment of a permanent policy, so be sure to ask someone as the rental desk should you need to explore this option.

How and Where Should You Apply?

There's some good news here: You can just go to the same source where you obtained your permanent coverage! You might as well go to your regular insurance agent first and attempt to add temporary coverage to your existing policy. This takes a lot of the leg work out of needlessly searching for a whole new company just to get temporary coverage. As far as payment on premiums, it's generally done as a flat rate deal, paid monthly in installment form or just given to the company as a flat rate. A lot of the time, payment frequency will depend on the exact type of temporary coverage as well as what specific comapany you go with.