Don’t get stranded at the roadside this weekend

With the bank holiday getaway fast approaching, if you are intending to drive abroad, it’s time to check that your motor insurance policy provides adequate cover for driving and breakdown when outside the UK, according to Find.co.uk.

Although ‘foreign use and European breakdown’ insurance may not have been your top concern when you purchased the policy, this cover is essential if you intend to use your vehicle abroad.

All motor insurance nowadays provides the minimum insurance required to ensure compliance with the laws governing compulsory insurance within the European Union or countries that have agreed to implement the EU Insurance Directives.

However, in order to ensure that you have sufficient cover for driving your car while abroad you will need to ensure that your policy includes ‘foreign use.’

This will either be automatically included as a ‘standard cover’ on your policy, or it can be purchased as an ‘optional extension’ for an additional premium.

In general, where foreign use is provided as a ‘standard cover,’ most insurers will provide a period of free cover subject to two limits:

the total number of days you can take in aggregate for all visits abroad in any one policy year, and
the total number of days you can take per individual trip.

For instance, your insurer may stipulate that you are covered for a maximum of 90 days driving abroad in total per year, but that each trip must not exceed 30 days.

So if you were on an extended driving holiday, you would have to return to the UK at the end of 30 days to maintain cover. If this were not feasible, you would need to arrange extended cover at the outset.

As nearly all motor insurance certificates now include information to the relevant overseas authorities about the cover provided under these policies, a Green Card is no longer always required.

But if you intend to visit countries which are NOT included within the insurer’s normal territorial limits, a Green Card may still be required and this will usually incur an extra cost.

Furthermore, although some overseas cover is provided as ‘standard,’ it is still advisable to alert your insurer in advance that you will be driving abroad, as some insurers still require this as part of their policy conditions.

Some insurers do not offer roadside assistance insurance in the UK, let alone European breakdown cover.

Where cover is provided, the vast majority of insurers require you to purchase this as an ‘optional’ extra, with only Marks and Spencer providing ‘UK and European’ breakdown cover automatically.

Some thirteen insurers in the selection of providers shown in the table do not provide overseas breakdown assistance at all, so if you have a policy with one of these and you need overseas breakdown cover, you would have to purchase separate cover elsewhere, from a provider such as the AA, Greenflag and RAC which sell standalone European Breakdown cover.

If you have a ‘premier’ bank account, you may have breakdown cover included as one of the ‘freebies’ which are often provided with these accounts, but check that it covers you for driving abroad.

Kate Marsden, marketing director at Find.co.uk says, “Whatever your overseas motoring plans this summer, make sure you are covered for all the countries you intend to visit and against the eventuality of a breakdown.”