Short term car insurance is any policy covering your vehicle for a set time period of 6 months or less. If the policy covers over 6 months, it is usually considered a long term car insurance policy or simply car insurance.
Another way this is referred to is temporary car insurance. This would be for any vehicle that you don’t intend on keeping long term. For instance: a vehicle that you’ll be selling or will only have for a short period of time, but will still be driving around.
Cheap short term car insurance is not overly difficult to come by, but cheap is a relative term that is most likely based on your driving history, the length of the term you require insurance on, and the type of vehicle you’ll be insuring. Economy cars cost less to insure than sports cars for instance.
There are two main types of car insurance, one is a policy called liability only which means that in the event there is an accident and you are found at fault, the damage to your vehicle wouldn’t be covered and the carrier would simply assume responsibility for the damage to another vehicle or property or bodily harm caused to the occupants involved in the accident.
The other type of insurance is full coverage which means that the insurance will cover most of the damage or replace the vehicles, etc. This is specific to each policy, so as much as this article may serve as a brief intro to short term auto insurance, it shouldn’t be taken as information to go further than what your local agent can confirm for you.
There are several providers of auto car insurance including direct car insurance, geico, state farm, progressive and several other larger carriers.
With short term car insurance, you usually don’t have access to one of the larger carriers directly. Normally, you’ll go through a broker to access these larger carriers as the brokers can then package the short term policies together and either resell them, or keep them. This will vary by broker, and by carrier.
The application process is relatively simple and can be done without an exhausting time period. Check with your local agent to see what is required when dealing with the find out process associated with securing one of these policies.
The majority of this information is specific to residents of the US. However, there are a lot of other countries that will have similar policies, especially within North and South America and also Europe. Australia and New Zealand will have similar structure, but each country has regulations that will vary as well. There is more due diligence required on your part that a good phone call will take care of.
Some questions to ask of your short term car insurance agent would include:
- what types of vehicles do you cover?
- what is the duration for coverage? (usually anywhere from 1 day to 6 months)
- what policy would you recommend? (provide your situation)
- what is my total cost to be insured?
This total cost question is really the one that you need to learn and take with you to “shop around” to help you identify the best cheap short term car insurance companies.
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