Temporary Car Insurance

Temporary Car Insurance provides traditional insurance cover in emergency situations where you or someone else may need to drive your own (uninsured) car or where it becomes necessary for you to drive someone else's car, for example a test, rental or borrowed car, for a brief period.

Temporary Car Insurance can be conveniently organised online, with the certificate received in a matter of minutes. You can choose to have car insurance cover from 1 day up to 28 days at a time. You may also be able to arrange the car insurance cover for up to 30 days in advance. Temporary Car Insurance is advantageous for a personal car where such a vehicle is not driven regularly since you do not have to buy insurance for a full year. Temporary Car Insurance can also be used for road tax purposes as it is recorded as valid insurance on the Motor Insurance Database (MID).

Policy may differ between insurance companies but, due to their short term nature, refunds are generally not available for temporary car insurance. Also, there is no automatic renewal or extension of the insurance period which can be a problem when you are minutes outside of the coverage period. The excess, compared to regular insurance, can be quite high. A condition easily missed is that Temporary Car Insurance is not recognised as proper insurance for the purpose of recovering an impounded vehicle. The certificate is usually stamped with this notice, making it worthless for such a purpose. However, a temporary car insurance can still be obtained to enable another driver to drive away the impounded car after release.

Certain conditions must be satisfied before a temporary car insurance cover can be provided. Such conditions include a full UK or European licence, driver of at least 21 years of age, and no criminal record or driving disqualification. Also, as with any product, quotes can vary markedly. Therefore, do a bit of comparison.