Hastings car insurance enhanced personal accident cover

Lither

Hi,

I'm in the process of getting car insurance from Hastings and have a choice of getting the enhanced personal accident cover for £34.99, is this worth it or better get it from somewhere else?

This is what it states in the policy.

Your policy includes standard personal accident cover of up to £5,000 between you and your partner. 

Enhanced personal accident cover offers additional payments, regardless of who caused the accident or any other compensation you may be offered, to you and up to six passengers: 

• £100,000 for serious injuries such as permanent disability, loss of a limb or death (lower limits for under 16s, please see policy wording for details) 

• £1,000 per fractured bone (up to a maximum of £5,000) 

• £1,000 for each aftercare benefit, such as physiotherapy, counselling, help at home and out of pocket expenses. 

• £100 per day (up to 90 days) for injuries temporarily preventing you from working or completing your daily activities. 

You're not covered for anyone over 79 years of age or for any pre-existing medical conditions. The injured person must live in the UK and mustn't be driving without wearing a seatbelt or whilst under the influence of alcohol or drugs. 

The insurer is Canopius Managing Agents Ltd

Sandtree

When I was doing my first ever training as a claims handler for one of the largest UK Motor Insurers more years ago than I care to admit now the training manager had been with the company for 20 years and a senior claims handler for most of them... after the end of the 2 week basic training I questioned the fact that when they do the "car insurance is like pizza" demonstration they said one of the benefits of Comp cover was the Personal Accident protection it gave but in the two weeks it hadn't been mentioned again and we hadn't been shown how they go into the system. 

She said in her 20 years it had never come up once and whilst my claims career was much shorter than hers I equally never came across a single claim where a claim was made against the PA section.

Certainly the levels of cover you are quoting are substantially above those normally given, probably less for the upper end but the existence of some form of loss of earnings and physio etc. Though if it were a non-fault claim you'd be expecting the counter party to cover these types of things in full.

If its worth the extra premiums, only you can really decide that.

dunstonh

personal accident cover is probably called that rather than the more common generic name of personal accident protection.  Its initials were PAP.   And that indicates the general level of quality of this type of plan.    If you could find initials that spell out "cash cow" then that would work too.

Sandtree

Think cash cow has already been taken by Motor Legal Expenses... things may have changed now but back in the day the policyholder may pay £15 for it but the law firms effectively also pay £7.50 for each policy to be on the panel and it basically cost nothing to administer... cant think of many other products where both your customers and your suppliers pay you.