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Business Car Insurance: Why you need it

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There are two types of car insurance: business car insurance and personal car insurance. The former refers to insurance coverage of company owned cars, leased cars and employee cars used in business operations while the latter refers to coverage for cars used for personal necessities.

Many companies and employees to their dismay, discover later on that separating the two is very important. A company car issued to employees to facilitate performance of assigned duties is often subjected to hard use. Long distance trips may be involved, and the employee may not be very careful with it which makes it more prone to accidents. Business car insurance takes care of the risk in losing goods, human life, as well as damages to the car itself. Imagine what accidents will do to uninsured company cars and the company balance sheet everytime accidents happen.

There are all kinds of insurance companies out there and choosing the coverage that best fits your requirements is the best thing to do to safeguard the interests of the company.  However, there are things the company can do to lower insurance outlays. The most important is to have their cars always in good condition; naturally, insurance companies charge more for cars which have obviously been through a lot.  Moreover, they should get drivers that are competent and who can be depended upon to not cause accidents. Needlessly losing your coverage for having employed somebody unreliable is not ideal.

Business car insurance coverage, as the name suggests, is for risks involved when the car is used on official company business. A lot of employees particularly salesmen and high ranking officials, use company cars for personal concerns. There have been plenty of cases where claims were denied because the accidents occurred when the car was not on an official assignment. Here the policy must be clear to employees or the insurance company must be aware about the terms of use for the insured cars so it can be covered in the policy.

There is also the matter of employee owned cars used on official business. The difference between what’s official and what is personal must be clearly defined or the company through its business car insurance will end up shouldering all insurance settlement costs.

For the layman all these are rather unclear. Consulting an insurance agent, two or three of them for comparison, is an excellent way of making sure that the company gets the most convenient coverage.