Fleet Insurance vs Individual Insurance Policies

Insuring multiple vehicles can be stressful and expensive. It can be a nightmare to remember which vehicles in your fleet are insured and which aren’t, as well as finding separate policies for each one. That’s why we offer fleet insurance, meaning you can cover 2 or more vehicles in the same plan, particularly if they are primarily used for business use.  

In this blog, we’ll have a look at the difference between fleet and individual insurance, weighing up the pros and cons in terms of cost, cover and flexibility. This should help you to make an informed decision regarding your car insurance choice.

The difference between fleet insurance and individual insurance

Fleet insurance allows you to cover multiple vehicles under one policy, which vastly simplifies the process of finding insurance for two or more cars. With individual insurance, you’d need to search for the best deal for every individual vehicle you’re hoping to cover, which is also likely to be more costly. 

Fleet insurance gives you the peace of mind of knowing that all of your vehicles are protected, whilst individual insurance might get confusing (especially if you have quite a few vehicles to insure). This is because individually insuring your car or van is a very similar process to using fleet insurance policies. As a result, you are increasing the amount of time and effort it takes to cover all your vehicles.

Simplify the process with a Fleet insurance policy.

The pros and cons of fleet insurance

There are a number of pros of fleet insurance:

Now let’s have a look at some potential cons of fleet insurance:

The pros and cons of individual commercial vehicle insurance

Here are some pros of commercial vehicle insurance:

Now, some cons of individual commercial vehicle insurance:

Fleet vs individual insurance: Claims impact

Normally, it’s easier to make claims on fleet insurance than through multiple individual insurance policies. This is because all your vehicles will be covered by one insurer, on the same plan. Check out more information regarding how to make a motor claim. 

Fleet policies are especially beneficial when insuring a larger number of vehicles, making it much easier to track each claim and understand what you are covered for under the fleet policy. 

With individual insurance plans, you may have to do a lot more admin work in the process of a claim, finding the plan which each individual vehicle is under to find specific details before making a claim. This would be much more time consuming and a lot more hassle.

Fleet vs individual insurance: Cost

In general, fleet insurance is a much cheaper option than insuring multiple vehicles under separate plans. This becomes increasingly true with higher numbers of vehicles, because fleet plans with more vehicles usually come with bigger and better quantity-based discounts.

There are some cases in which individual insurance might be a more cost effective option, especially if you are looking to insure different vehicles with different levels of coverage or multiple drivers. 

Check if you qualify for fleet insurance.

Fleet vs individual insurance: Cover level

If you’re looking to insure multiple vehicles at the same level of cover, then fleet insurance is the better option for sure. However, with most fleet insurance plans, all vehicles will be offered the same level of cover. This means that if you are hoping for different coverage on different vehicles in your fleet, you might have to opt for individual coverage on those vehicles.

Bear in mind that if you are a business with multiple vehicles, you can still cover the majority of these vehicles under a fleet plan, and any which require different levels of coverage can be individually insured. This is still a simpler and easier process than choosing individual insurance plans for every vehicle.

Fleet vs individual insurance: Driver flexibility

Fleet insurance policies come in ‘named driver’ and ‘any driver’ policies. This means that you can choose between each vehicle being insured with a single driver, and that the insurance is only valid if they are driving, or having any qualified driver fall under the insurance plan.

A named driver policy is cheaper, but of course limits each vehicle to a specific driver, so consider your needs and who will be driving vehicles before you find your plan. Similarly, individual insurance plans often offer the same choice, but you of course aren’t tied to this choice with every vehicle in your fleet when choosing individual plans. This is one benefit of using individual insurance plans, but bear in mind the additional costs that this is likely to accrue. 

If you’re interested in motor fleet insurance, whether it’s for a mini fleet, HGV fleet or anything else, get in touch with us at FleetCover.