Caravan insurance 2023

[Fizzie]

New van is due "soon" , so starting to look at insurance.

Did a search but it hasn't been discussed in a "few" years, so who is everybody's go to for van insurance these days?

[GeoffA]

Ours is with the RACV.

[Brisbane Puff]

Had insurance with CIC, but when the premiums went up, looked around and found a much better coverage at half the premium with RACQ...

[Rowlie]

I will preface my response by saying this was my game pre retirement. I have no affiliation with anyone now but I read PDSs carefully and challenge insurers when I find wording issues.

CIL is the Jayco equivalent in the insurance arena. ie they have the lion's share of the market. It is a Suncorp coy and only insures RVs ie caravans motorhomes etc. I am not aware of any claims issues or problems with them but they have an exclusion that annoys me (or at least they did last time I read their PDS). It refers to "transportation" and in fairness the policy can be extended to cover it. Now the word "transportation" is not defined so they can decide what it means at their leisure. When I asked them they told me it refers to placing your van on a train ie Adelaide to Darwin etc. My argument is that it could also mean putting it on a tow truck after my car has broken down.

The policy only covers fire, flood collision or overturning unless you have sought and paid for the exclusion to be removed. My van had to be "transported" from Qld to Vic after a breakdown. Luckily I knew about the issue and paid an extra premium to cover things such as hail damage, vandalism, loading and unloading etc etc. The issue could easily be remedied if they defined the word "transportation". Incidentally to the best of my knowledge no one else has this exclusion.

 From my research all of the Suncorp coys have the same exclusion and as a result I moved to RACV and paid a bit more.

[paull]

I was with NRMA, largely because they offered lay up cover for up to 6 months when not being used, and that reduced my premium by 30%. When I first started with them (probably 7 years ago now) they were the only insurer that offer this.

I have recently moved house, and my van is now no longer in a garage, or even under cover of any description. It's still off the road, behind a locked gate, but it's not under cover.
When I phoned NRMA to change my address they then told be that their layup cover was only offered if the van was off the road, and under cover (car port, garage etc......some sort of structure) so they could no longer offer this to me. I was a bit ####ed off as that effectively increased my premium by nearly 50% from what I was paying.

I hunted around and found that there are others offering this layup cover now. I ended up changing to Lets Go Caravan Insurance, who are apparently a partnership between an insurance company (obviously) and the Caravan Industry Association of Australia. They stipulate the van needs to be off the road and behind a locked gate to qualify, but it doesn't need to be under a structure/cover. They were slightly more than the NRMA would have been had I still been eligible for their layup cover, but not a lot.

[Rowlie]

I have just read the current CIL PDS and both of their supplementary PDSs. They have changed their position on the "transportation" issue. They now  exclude loading and unloading as well as rubbing and vibration etc. under the optional covers area headed "Transporting Your Caravan".

When I challenged them before moving my cover away they explained that damage during transportation should be covered by the transporter. That is incorrect and I told them why and anyway why would I want to be arguing with a towie when all my premiums go to you? I still have issues with the exclusion re loading and unloading. They obviously don't want to be chasing down towies to recover their losses. If they don't want to why would I?

You can extend the policy it seems to cover this but my take is that you need to do that when the case arises. Good luck if you break down after hours or 10 minutes outside Whoop Whoop.

[below sea level]

I'm with RACQ. One of my big considerations was that I wanted to insure the tow vehicle and caravan with the same company. Partly to make it easier for me, and partly to prevent two different companies each trying to offload the claim onto the other if something happened.