How To Get Your Excess Money Back After You’ve Claimed

You know that amount of money you pay to your insurer when you submit a car insurance claim? It’s called an excess (which you probably already knew) and for some lucky few it might be a relatively low figure… But for the most part, a lot of people pay quite a bit more. That’s probably got a lot to do with the fact that if you choose a higher excess, it’ll make your premium much lower.

Ultimately, though, regardless of whether it’s R2,000 or R10,000, this excess payment is still money that’s got to come out of your own pocket and it can be hard to cough up. Especially if you don’t think that you’ll ever see that cash again. But did you know that you can sometimes get this money back? It’s true. Depending on the circumstances, your insurer may be able to recover either the whole or a portion of your excess for you.

Here’s how to get your excess back.

Talk to your insurer

The first thing to understand is that you can’t get your excess back on your own. This is something that only your insurer can do for you, so please talk to them.

Don’t approach the third party

It’s also so important to know that you can’t go directly to the third party to get your excess money back. This can jeopardise the process and cause issues for your insurer as they try to do their job.

Who’s at fault in the incident

There are very specific circumstances under which your insurer can get your excess money back. For example, if you were involved in a car accident and it wasn’t your fault, then it’s entirely possible.

Help your insurer process your claim quickly

The recovery of excess money generally is something that your insurer does after they’ve handled your claim. So, make sure to do your part by supplying all the documents and info requested, on time and in full. Genuinely, this is such a big help to your insurer and makes a difference to the recovery process.

Scenarios when you’re unlikely to get your excess money back

• The incident you’re claiming for was your fault.
• There was no third party involved in the incident.
• You didn’t get the correct details of the third party responsible.
• The third party can’t pay the excess.
• The recovery process costs more for your insurer than the excess amount itself.

Unfortunately, as you can see from the above examples, there are circumstances under which your insurer can’t recover this money for you. It really just depends on the nature of your claim and your insurer.

What would probably be a lot harder to bear is if you got into a car accident and didn’t have insurance at all, leaving you to pay for the damage to your own car and potentially having the third party’s insurance company come after you for the damage to their car, as well as their excess (if you were at fault). That’s a tremendous amount of debt to rack up, which could be avoided by making sure that you have the right cover now.

If you’re interested in quality car insurance that’s super cheap, then click here to get a quote from a leading insurer.