[Aditya]

Car insurance is mandatory. Driving without a policy is an offense.

In the past, there used to be just a handful of insurance companies - mainly PSUs, that used to offer car insurance. Now however, there are many more companies that offer car insurance. This is good news for us - the customers, because we get to choose a policy from a company that gives us the best deal.

Besides choosing between PSUs and private companies, one can pick the company that's charging the lowest premium, or the highest no claim bonus. One can choose the company that offers the exact cover that he wants or is the quickest at processing claims. Someone might choose a company that has enabled online transactions and submission of claim forms or check the status of a claim online. The number of affiliated garages might also play a part in choosing an insurance provider for your car.

No one wants an insurance company that makes him run behind them.

So which company is your preferred car insurance provider & why?

[GTO]

Car insurance is more or less commoditized. I buy based on who is giving me the lowest price as long as, of course, the company has some reputation. My car insurance policies are currently from Royal Sundaram; they are one of the rare guys who offer zero-dep coverage on my 7-year old car.

[Eddy]

Originally Posted by GTO

Car insurance is more or less commoditized. I buy based on who is giving me the lowest price as long as, of course, the company has some reputation. My car insurance policies are currently from Royal Sundaram; they are one of the rare guys who offer zero-dep coverage on my 7-year old car.

Absolutely. My criteria is similar. I just renewed the insurance of my S-Cross with Future Generalli because they were among the few offering it for a 5+ year old car.

[WhiteSierra]

Nice thread. I usually buy insurance from United India insurance, my friend works there and I thought it would be better if I take insurance from a known person working in a known company. I also have my family health insurance from the same company apart from the insurance my office provides(mandatory).

Luckily so far I never had to make any claim on any of my cars / scooter (fascino). Most of my cars are old, 8 to 10+ years, since we get all our insurance policies renewed every year, United India provides the best IDV, and I'm very comfortable with it. Few other cars have 3rd party insurance and UI was little cheaper than other providers. In third party insurance, the price difference will be very less.

Recently Hyderabad was flooded due to very bad rains, all the cars were safe but our Wagon-R was affected that too only the flood water made its way into the carpet and not the engine (covered the exhaust with plastic wraps). But other cars in our colony were badly affected, few were total loss and few required engine rebuild, and other works(ECU replacements, EPS, Airbags, ABS modules / sensors replacements). One of our neighbor's Jeep Compass' ECU was fried due to flood water, he did not have engine cover add on, and I was told ECU replacement is covered only if you have Engine cover option, which is when I checked my Wagon-R's insurance policy, to my shock there is no engine cover protection even as an add on for a 7 year old car. United India provides engine cover option only for maximum of 5th year of car's life. My Wagon-R's insurance expired on 30th October, which is when I went for DIGIT insurance which provided engine cover on my 7 year old Wagon-R. I bought it from Policy bazaar and they purchase experience was very good, even the updates (SMS and Mail) were very quick from Digit, My Fascino's insurance also expired on the same day (30th October), since it is only a 3 year old vehicle, I got it renewed at UI itself with Engine cover option. It is just 2% of your overall insurance cost / IDV and it is really worth it, I suggest everyone to do buy Engine cover add on while buying / renewing your insurance policy. I really hope there wouldn't be any situation to claim insurance due to any accident or flood damage, but having an insurance gives us a peace of mind and would also leave us out of trouble from cops.

[self_driven]

Voted for ICICI Lombard purely based on their exceptional customer service. Claim process is similar with most providers these days where workshops have cashless tie-ups with insurance companies.

Like others, I also used to stick to the insurer with lowest quote or most comprehensive coverage. 9 out of 10 times, HDFC or Bajaj Allianz were my top choices until I had to deal with the latter's terrible customer care team. Long story short, it's been 3 months and I am still waiting for them to process my simple (policy cancellation) refund case.

[2000rpm]

I bought the Go-Digit insurance after reading the thread praising their RSA.

I had no preference till then.

[Abhi5868]

My current insurance is New India Assurance. Before that we had Liberty General Insurance.

There's no preferred insurance company as such for us, we bought New India from Policybazar simply because it was the best deal offered. Although my dad is biased towards the public sector companies , the private ones are catching up very quickly. As long as we get VFM deals from the trusted companies there's no point fixating at a particular provider.

[CrAzY dRiVeR]

Voted for Oriental Insurance.

My current policies are from them for all the below reasons -

1. Rates are competitive.
2. Have heard good feedback regarding claims. Also not a fully private company - so hopefully can expect good payments in return, although there might be typical delays.
3. Have known agents to handle the process.

That said - I do not have a BIG preference of insurance provider and would be willing to switch (And I do switch between Royal Sundaram and TATA AIG too, depending on the rates offered).

Only main criteria I have - No ICICI Lombard.

[drmohitg]

I do not have any favourite as such but have voted for ACKO. The reason being that this time for my Ecopsort I opted for Acko which gave me an excellent quote owing to a feature that I did not see in other providers till then (not sure if more players are offering it now). This is the way they offer their 0 depreciation claim. Now usually the 0 depreciation add-on is the costliest component of your insurance these days and Acko gives you the choice of opting for it but agreeing to pay a sum of Rs. 5000 in case of a claim instead of the industry standard of Rs. 2000. But by doing so they lowered the premium amount drastically and the policy for my 3-year-old Ecosport costed just 10k instead of the next closest figure of 17k for the same set of add-ons that I opted for.

This is a game-changer for me as I am someone who uses 0 depreciation only when there is significant damage and not for minor nicks. So most years I don't take a claim but yet pay the full premium for the sake of having all the add-ons.

Having said that, I have never had a bad experience with any other insurance company as such over the last 2 decades, to be honest. This includes 3 claims that I have taken from ICICI, Tata and Royal Sundaram.

[self_driven]

Originally Posted by drmohitg

The reason being that this time for my Ecopsort I opted for Acko which gave me an excellent quote owing to a feature that I did not see in other providers till then (not sure if more players are offering it now).

Yes. That's called voluntary deductible and almost every insurance company offers this. With that being said, I really appreciate how Acko has cleverly marketed and used an existing feature to their advantage.

[drmohitg]

Originally Posted by self_driven

Yes. That's called voluntary deductible and almost every insurance company offers this. With that being said, I really appreciate how Acko has cleverly marketed and used an existing feature to their advantage.

My bad then. But completely agree with you in that case. I have come across that term multiple times before but never truly understood what it means. But Acko made that the highlight of their offer and explained it very well and hence got my business and vote here.

[Vijin]

United India, mostly because of a known person working there and it is a no-frills GoI owned company. I did use it one time for re-imbursement and it was hassle free. On the flip side, not many ASS allow cashless settlement with UIIC policy.

I saw praise for godigit RSA in other thread, where a Harrier got stuck, however their website mentions ” We serve you up to 500 kms from your city". Now, I am not fully aware if United India have a RSA scheme or how good they are, I prefer RSA from Manufacturer for peace of mind as they seem to have pan India reach (had decent experience with Hyundai).

[Hayek]

Did not vote. Have a negative list - PSU Insurance Cos, Reliance General, anyone where the policy cannot be purchased entirely online. Based on revealed preference, have bought from Tata AIG, ICICI Lombard, HDFC Ergo and Bajaj Allianz in the past. I tend not to comparison shop once I have a policy on a car - don’t see a reason to change providers for a few thousand Rupees.

[libranof1987]

I've generally been provider-agnostic; I'd pick whoever provided the most benefit (0-dep especially) at the most reasonable price. I ensured to stick to the big names though: New India, Tata AIG, Iffco Tokio (not that these are the only ones).

However, in the last couple of years, I've renewed insurance through the respective dealers because Ford and Hyundai ASCs have both refused to honor cashless claims just because the policy wasn't issued through a dealer. Even if the provider was in their "preferred" list, they extend that benefit. No amount of escalations or complaints to IRDAI made them budge on this. So, now I just renew my policies through the dealer, and whoever is from their preferred list.

[SmartCat]

Instead of looking at premium and brand value, perhaps we could look at claims settlement ratio as a metric for determining top insurance companies? Because this gives us an idea about "honesty" of insurance comapnies when it comes to settling claims



I managed to find claims settlement ratio data for FY18:
https://www.insurancedekho.com/car-i...t-in-india.htm

OD is Own Damage, TP is Third Party liability





ICICI Lombard too talks about this metric on their website:



This metric can also be used to pick up the right health insurance policy.