Fleet Insurance

Managing a fleet is no easy job, and part of that responsibility is to ensure that all your drivers hold the proper type of insurance that allows them to drive for business.
As a rule, there are 5 different types of insurance

• Social, domestic and pleasure, excluding commuting
• Social domestic and pleasure, including commuting
• Class one business use
• Class two business use
• Class three business use

(List courtesy of Fleet News)

Although this seems fairly straight forward, the top two on the insurance list do not actually cover business which is often not realized by an employer.

The problem stands that without checking each of your fleet drivers’ documents, there is no way of knowing just how many hold the correct cover.

According to company Alphabet, of the 6/7000 insurance certificates they check every year, 20% of the drivers are not holding the correct cover.
The manager from Alphabet stated, ““Drivers don’t understand what they need and it doesn’t cover them properly.”

“A lot of people assume that going to another office is commuting but it’s not the employee’s usual, permanent place of work. People don’t know what they are insuring themselves for and go for the lowest cost.”

Although some insurance certificates are very clear and state that the do not cover business usage, some certificates can be less obvious about the fact and can cause confusion for both manager and driver.

Fleet Manager at Natual Resources Wales claimed, “Some certificates are quite woolly. If I don’t see business use on there I challenge the employee to get confirmation from their insurer.”

(image courtesy of David Castillo/ freedigitalphotos.net)