If you’ve ever wondered ‘how can I reduce fleet insurance costs?’ Then this is the blog for you.
The truth is that depending on the choices you make to manage your vehicles, drivers and policies, your fleet’s insurance premiums can be either a large expense or a rather reasonable deal. A few savvy decisions can save you a lot of money, which you can then put towards other fleet expenses or investing in the future. (That electric fleet won’t pay for itself!)
So, to help you save money and manage your fleet to the optimum level, these are our top eight ways to lower your fleet insurance premiums.
One of the best ways to reduce fleet costs is to make sure your drivers have training that goes above and beyond the safety basics. This can help your premiums in two ways. First, it will improve your driver’s safety awareness, meaning they’ll be less likely to have the kinds of accidents that can lead to claims and raised premiums down the line. Secondly, it shows insurers you’re doing everything you can to improve safe driving practices amongst your people and lessen the chance of accidents. That’s likely to bring down your premiums in future – especially if the course you choose is through an insurer-approved training partner.
This is another obvious way to reduce fleet costs. The higher you set your excess the more you’d have to pay towards a claim if any of your drivers has an accident. A higher excess shows a commitment to keeping drivers trained and operating safely, which in turn is likely to lower your premiums.
Another proven way to reduce your fleet insurance premiums is to work with your insurer to do a risk assessment. This will look at both your company’s claim history and your drivers’ personal driving histories to see if you can make changes to your fleet or driver training. If there are, you can then work with your insurer on a plan to help lower your premiums.
The younger and more inexperienced a driver is, the higher their premiums are likely to be. So if you have a fleet stocked with drivers under 25 years of age, your insurance premiums are going to be higher. It stands to reason then that one of the most proven ways to reduce your fleet insurance premiums is to employ a workforce of people 25 and over, or alternatively to ensure drivers under that age as named drivers.
Telematics boxes sit unassumingly inside your vehicle and track how safely your drivers use your vehicles. Over time, this allows your insurer to build up a picture of how your fleet operates, which could contribute to lowered premiums down the line if the insurer likes the results. Crucially, it’s important to note that the information gathered from telematics systems won’t make your premiums go up – so fitting a telematics system across your entire fleet is something of a win-win.
Anybody can have an accident, so removing a driver from your policy for one mishap might be a bit much. But if one member of staff seems particularly accident-prone, it could be an idea to take them off your policy and have them use their own personal one instead.
A dashboard-mounted camera is guaranteed to have a lasting impact on how your drivers. Simply knowing that their behaviour on the road is being recorded is going to keep them accountable and more aware of their behaviour – especially when that footage can be used in insurance and police enquiries if a serious accident occurs. On the other hand, this footage can also be used to help you spot a driver’s bad habits and inform a training plan to help them work on it. That makes a dashcam one of the best ways to reduce fleet costs across the board.
Just like with personal driving insurance policies, one of the best ways to lower your fleet insurance premiums is to make sure your vehicles are parked somewhere safe and secure overnight. This could be indoors, like in a warehouse, hanger or individual garages, or even an outside yard that’s locked securely and is protected by a security team and/or security cameras. The safer your insurer feels your vehicles are when they’re on your premises, the lower your premiums are likely to be.
Our final entry on how to reduce the cost of fleet insurance is simply to only claim when absolutely necessary. That might mean absorbing the cost of some minor accidents where they prove non-prohibitive, in the hope that doing so will stop your insurance costs from soaring in the long term. If you’re taking the measures mentioned above, and you’re confident that these smaller scrapes won’t turn into something bigger, then this is certainly something to consider.
From telematics to training courses and risk assessments backed by in-depth reporting, we’ve helped plenty of fleet businesses optimise their operations and lower their outgoings. So if you’re not sure where to start, we can help.
To work through your options, call us on 0344 854 5100 or email CSalmon@sgfleet.com.
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