While making an insurance claim what exactly is excess?

Question

While making an insurance claim what exactly is excess?

Answer 1

An example. If the claim is for £2000 and your excess is £150 then you would receive £1850.

However if you are VAT registered and you claim the VAT back, you not only need to pay £150 but also the VAT on the whole claim.

Therefore in this instance you would looking to pay £500 yourself and then claiming the VAT back as per normal.

Answer 2

The insurance company will only payout in excess of a certain amount. It is this amount that is called 'the excess' and you have to pay for it.

Usually the excess is at least £50. So if you make an insurance claim, the insurer will not pay the first £50 of your claim but will pay the amount of this excess. Essentially you are left with paying the £50 excess.

Answer 3

IT's the amount you have to pay towards replacing anything first before your insurance company will pay for owt.

e.g. if you have household contents with £100 excess, you get burgled and need to replace £2000 worth of stuff, you pay the first £100 towards it and your insurance company pays the rest.

Answer 4

Your contribution.They pay so much and you pay the rest.

Answer 5

Is the portion of any claim that is not covered by the insurance provider. It is normally quoted as a fixed quantity and is a part of most policies covering losses to the policy holder. The excess or deductible must be paid by the insured, before the benefits of the policy can apply. Typically, a general rule is: the higher the deductible, the lower the premium.Usually at the time of contract they mention the excess in the policy.

Answer 6

when your policy limits have been exhausted which means that the amount to be paid for a loss is more that the limit ($$) you have purchased.

Answer 7

Totally agree with Ooooly and Penfold, the excess is the amount above which the insurer will pay out.

If you have a 500 excess and the claim is 450, they pay nothing, if the claim is 550 they pay 50.

If the claim is only slightly above the excess (the 550 claim example above) then many people choose not to claim as it may mean losing a No Claim Bonus which could be worth more than the amount that they'd get for claiming.

In this example if your No Claims Bonus was worth 75 and you'd only get 50 for claiming (550-500) you might want to think about whether it was worth it as in financial terms you'd be 25 worse off.

Strictly speaking you are still supposed to tell your insurer about the loss even if you don't claim,  but frankly not many people do.

Answer 8

when you take out an insurance the more exess you pay then the cheaper the insurance.so if you was to say offer 250 excess it means that if you have to put in a claim you will have to pay the first 250 pounds of the claim

Answer 9

this is the amount that is not covered by your insurer and you will have to pay