FAQ: Free Legal Cover
Questions
- What is Legal cover?
- What is an excess?
- Why do I have to pay an excess when the accident wasn’t my fault?
- What does my free £50,000 Legal Expenses Insurance cover me for?
- Will Plan Assist’s Legal Expenses Cover help me claim for personal injuries?
Answers
What is Legal cover?
Plan Assist’s Legal Cover provides assistance to recover uninsured losses (such as excess), medical losses or loss of earnings. We will provide up to £50,000 for legal costs to pursue a case, and up to £10,000 worth of cover to defend against any motoring prosecutions (N.B. excluding drink/drug-related offences).
What is an excess?
Most insurance policies have an excess. An excess is the first amount of a claim that you are not insured for (sometimes known as a deductible.) Your insurance company will not pay out unless the claim is over the excess amount.
If the claim is over the excess amount the insurers will remove this from the amount they pay out. The excess therefore is something not covered under the policy. The excess is your responsibility, and it is important you are aware of the excess amount when you take out your policy. You can often increase the amount of excess you pay on your policy in order to reduce the premium amount. This is called a voluntary excess.
Why do I have to pay an excess when the accident wasn’t my fault?
During non fault claims confusion often occurs between customers and insurance companies because a large percentage of customers believe that the insurance company should claim back the excess on their behalf. However it is not your insurance company’s responsibility to claim your excess for you.
Plan Assist will act on your behalf to recover your outstanding excess as swiftly as possible. Plan Assist will chase the excess as part of the free £50,000 legal expense cover provided with your motor policy.
What does my free £50,000 Legal Expenses Insurance cover me for?
Plan Assist’s Legal Expenses Insurance Cover provides indemnity of up to £50,000 to cover the cost of recovering the losses incurred from a guilty party or their insurers for anything which is not covered on the policy, this includes excess and other things like injury claims.
In the event of a claim a solicitor will assigned to pursue recovery of any uninsured losses. Legal expenses are an additional service to most insurance policies, many companies will charge but Plan Assist provides this service free of charge.
Free Legal expenses cover is most beneficial when policies are not covered fully comprehensive as it will assist in Accident loss recovery. Accident loss recovery is the pursuit of claims for recovery of policy excess (as discussed above) or repair costs (when third party insured) following damage or total loss of the insured vehicle.
For example if your vehicle is insured third party and it is written off in an accident, with Plan Assist’s Free Legal Expenses Cover a solicitor will be assigned to reclaim the replacement value of the vehicle from the other party on your behalf.
Will Plan Assist’s Legal Expenses Cover help me claim for personal injuries?
Plan Assist’s Free Legal Expenses Cover will also help with the pursuit of claims following personal injury. For example if you or a passenger are injured in an accident and wish to claim damages then there are usually £50,000’s worth of expenses to do this. Pursuit of claims for the cost of replacement or repair of any personal belongings damaged in an accident is also included.