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Lease & Contract Hire Vehicles

Why are they treated differently when buying Gap Insurance?

Buying Gap Insurance can be slightly confusing at the best of times; however, when you have taken delivery of a brand new lease/contract hire vehicle, it can appear even more complicated. Lease vehicles why they are different

This confusion can arise as there can be no clarity as to which type of Gap Insurance you may need. In some cases, the information provided may not always be correct. 

When you think about taking a vehicle on a contract hire style lease, the key thing is that you do not, and cannot own the vehicle as part of the lease agreement. This is different to a cash purchase, or HP or PCP, where you do have the option to own it. 

Why is this significant? You do not have a purchase invoice in your name with a contract hire lease. This means that you cannot take a Return to Invoice policy as you have no invoice for the vehicle to claim for. 

With a Contract Hire/Lease arrangement, you have one liability. That is to meet the lease payments set out by the leasing company for the vehicle. Lease & Contract Hire GAP can help you cover this.

If the vehicle is declared a 'total loss' in the lease term, then your motor insurer should settle the market value at that time to you. 

However, this amount may be less than the settlement required to clear the lease at that time. The Contract Hire/Lease GAP Insurance is designed to cover any shortfall between the lease settlement and the motor insurers settlement. 

 

Can the lease/contract hire company expect you to protect the purchase price or P11D value?

Highly unlikely in our view. 

Your leasing company will provide you with a P11d value for insurance and taxation purposes. Your motor insurer may ask you for this value so you can insurer the market value of the vehicle. HMRC may ask you for the P11d amount (and a few other things) to help assess how much tax you may need to pay on the vehicle (if it is a benefit). 

However, the actual purchase price of the vehicle (the price the leasing company has paid) is often far less than you or I could buy the car for. Leasing companies often get huge lease discounts applied when they buy a car. 

If a leasing company asked you to cover a 'purchase price' higher than the one they originally paid, then this would seem a little unfair to say the least!

Your leasing company would typically expect the lease to be settled, in the event of a total loss. This settlement may be based on what they would have expected to have back for the lease anyway.  

 

I have 'new for old' replacement cover with my motor insurer, so do I need Lease GAP Insurance too?

This is another common question, and another that can cause much confusion for leaseholders. Indeed, many motor insurance policies do provide a new, replacement vehicle in the first twelve months of cover. However, like all insurance policies, there will be terms and eligibility that will need to be met. 

Most commonly, these are:

  • you need to be the owner and registered keeper of the vehicle
  • the leasing company need to agree to a new replacement. 

The issue with point one is that you are not, and can never be, the owner of the vehicle. 

The issue with point two is that the leasing company would have a lease in the details of a vehicle already written off. The security of a replacement vehicle not mentioned in the lease agreement may be no security at all. 

In our view and experience, 'new for old' replacement rarely applies on a lease vehicle. You would certainly need to be sure of the terms offered by the motor insurer AND the agreement of the leasing company before ever relying on that cover being valid. 

So as you can see, vehicles on Lease and Contract Hire agreements are quite different than those bought outright, on PCP or HP or with a bank loan. Making sure you have the right GAP Insurance is crucial as well.