GAP Insurance...I Have Seen The Light

I used to consider gap insurance as a rather unnecessary irrelevance to the purchase of a vehicle.

However, having been recently burgled with both of the family cars stolen from the driveway it made me reconsider my thought process.

Previously I had considered that if you purchase a new car then your motor insurers would have a clause within their policy that would replace the vehicle, as new, if it were the subject of a total loss claim within the first 6 or 12 months. This therefore largely mitigated the need for any GAP cover. Sure, if the vehicle was lost beyond the first 6/12 months then there was a potential for the value of the lost vehicle to be less than any outstanding finance and this may lead to financial difficulties. But GAP cover was expensive and generally seen as poor value?

Fortunately, in my situation the Insurance payouts for my stolen cars cleared the outstanding finance. However, this still left me in a position where I needed to order and pay a deposit on a new vehicle and refinance the new purchase at a new price.

If I had had a Combined GAP policy, not only would the finance on the stolen vehicle be cleared, but I would have received a cheque for the difference between the depreciated value of the stolen car and the original invoice value. In effect paying all the depreciation. This would have then allowed me to pay a healthy deposit towards the new vehicle and obtain this at a much lower monthly cost.

Suffice to say I have made moves to add a quality Combined GAP policy to the list of products I have available and I will be taking advantage of this cover when my new car is delivered. As a matter of interest, the comparative cost of this policy for my wife new car was £179.20 against £500.00 quoted by the car dealer!

It’s not just new cars that this cover can be taken on on - its any up to 7 years old, including small commercials up to 3.5 tons.

If you are interested in learning more, contact me.