Paying too much on your insurance? Gari Dombo, MD of Alexander Forbes Insurance, share his best tips on saving.
Car
You can keep your car insurance premium down by driving a lower powered, lower value or lower risk vehicle, limiting your mileage, adjusting the annual depreciation value of your car, upgrading the security level of your vehicle such as installing a tracking device, attending an advanced driving course to improve your chances of a low accident driving record, increasing your excess voluntarily and insuring your vehicle for named drivers only. Look at the cover extensions that are charged for and decide if you really need them. For example if you have more than one vehicle in the household, do you really need Car Hire cover? Do you need Car Hire cover on all of the vehicles?
Household
On your contents cover, you may decide that certain items would not be replaced, like that old grandfather clock or sentimental piece of jewellery. These you could negotiate with your insurer to have deleted (or excluded) from cover. Every year, it is important to re-evaluate insured items to decide if the possibility or severity of a risk makes the item worth insuring. Should you consider reducing your cover or self-insuring, then Dombo suggests that you put the premium saving away each month to provide for the extra risk that you are now taking on yourself. If the loss does not happen in time you will have built up a fund to use at your discretion.
Business
Review your business insurance regularly to identify those items less important to you and ensure that you have not duplicated cover or have unnecessary coverage. Talk to your insurance broker to determine what you can do to lower your business insurance cost. Examples would be installing a security system or fire prevention system or changing locations and getting an inspection done.
Photo by West Coast Surfer
