If you’ve got the luck of having the kind of job where you get to use a company car on business trips, it’s very likely that your company also insures the car, so you don’t have anything to worry about on that end. However, many companies want you to use your own car for business purposes, or maybe you’re self employed, so your car is both for business and personal use. In those two situations, the insurance aspect becomes a little more complex.

It may make you ask a couple of questions, and what the answers to those questions are all depend on where you’re at, what you’re doing, an so on. I mean, does your company’s car insurance policy cover you some time or all of the time? Do you need to get an insurance company to sell you a commercial car insurance policy when you’re self employed? Are you covered by your company when you rent a car for a business trip? It all depends.

• Your car, their company.

A lot of companies, the bigger ones at least, have commercial car insurance policies. These provide coverage for the traveling worker as well as for the one close to home while on company business. However, if you happen to get into an accident, it’s most likely that your own car insurance policy will pay first. In some cases, the company one does. To find out for sure, you’ll have to ask your company and your insurance agent for details.

Whoever is in charge of this at your company will know what’s going on if their insurance kicks in first. In that case, you’ll need the insurance information, so that you’ll know who to call and how to start the claims process if you get into an accident with that insurance.

When you’re traveling for business reasons and get into an accident, you should always start the claim process with the insurance for your company. This is because it will keep the claim off of your insurance record, which is never a bad thing. However, even if you start out with your own insurance company, never forget to mention that you were on a business trip. They can’t reject your claim for this. However, down the line they might try to get their money back from your company.

• Your car, your business.

So, say you’re self employed. If you use your car a lot, like for going about town and stopping to make sales and so on, then what you should do first is get a higher liability limit on your own car insurance policy. But if you have the kind of business where your work is directly related to the use of your car, such as a taxi driver or a newspaper deliverer, then you need to add even more to your insurance policy. It might be the best idea to just get a commercial policy taken out for yourself. You should do this because failure to could end up in you getting a claim denied because you failed to mention that you used your car for business.

There’s an easy way to figure out whether you need commercial car insurance or not. If you use your car for business reasons more than you use it for personal reasons, then you need commercial car insurance.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.